Around the age of 13, something clicks in the brains of children and nothing is the same. They become rebellious, supposedly independent, intolerable; so they become teenagers. And the rest of humanity is limited to staring at them with confused eyes and not fully understanding what’s going on. Because yes we were all young but that (most of the time) is not enough to understand them. It doesn’t even come close.

The science of young minds. For the past few years, a team from Stanford University has been investigating what goes on in the brains of children, adolescents, and young adults. Although development is one of the favorite subjects of psychologists, neurologists, and educators, the truth is that until recently we didn’t have the technology (or it was too expensive) to study the details of this whirlwind we call puberty.

listen inside. The team selected a sample of 46 boys and girls, ages seven to 16, who were about to undergo various medical tests. The idea was to put audio recordings on them (from both their mothers and unknown women) and use these tests to see what happened to their brain activity. The results were intriguing: while children under 12 showed a very intense neural response in their reward and emotion processing centers when listening to their mother’s voice, the situation changed from age 13.

This was the average age when the mother’s voice stopped producing such neurological reactions, and the data showed that mothers became more receptive to previously unfamiliar voices. “Adolescent is not fully aware that he is doing this. He is just being himself: he has friends and new colleagues and he wants to spend time with them. His mind becomes more sensitive and he is attracted to these unknown voices,” explains Daniel. Abrams is one of the researchers working on this issue.

Is puberty a brain disease? Judging by the dust this work evokes, it seems so. Seeing the results, many began to think that it was the brain that was causing adolescents to stop listening to their parents. But that’s a misconception: neuroimaging shows just that. It’s not that children become malicious machines to ignore their parents, but (one way or another) their circumstances and needs make them more interested in new experiences.

The “brain-centrism” that reigns in the way we communicate psychology can become a serious problem, as it disguises as “natural processes” what are really neuropsychological adaptations to the societies we create. Reducing what we find (whether new or old phenomenon) to the brain only obscures clues that fuel (and help us solve) problems.

In a way, as the researchers pointed out, what we see at the neural level is how adolescents begin to develop their social skills and begin to open up to the world around them in a new way. This is the law of life; It’s actually a positive and necessary thing. Though I guess that won’t reassure all parents who are pulling their hair out right now.

Image: Dollar Gill

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