Shots - Health News Tue October 16, 2012 Teenage Brains Are
Malleable And Vulnerable, Researchers Say Adolescent brains have
gotten a bad rap, according to neuroscientists. It's true that
teenage brains can be impulsive, scientists reported at the
Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans. But adolescent
brains are also vulnerable, dynamic and highly responsive to
positive feedback, they say. "The teen brain isn't broken," says
Jay Giedd, a child psychiatry researcher at the National
Institute of Mental Health. He says the rapid changes occurring
in the brains of teenagers make these years "a time of enormous
opportunity." These studies have concluded that teens are prone
to this sort of behavior because the so-called reward systems in
their brains are very sensitive while circuits involved in self-
control are still not fully developed, Casey says. The result
has been a perception that "adolescents are driving around with
no steering wheel and no brake," she says. Casey says a new
study from her lab mak