If valid, the study has important implications for interpreting risk-taking in teens. It suggests that the brains of many teens who behave dangerously are maturing early: Reckless behavior might in fact be a sign of adultness. Some adults do risky things (speeding, drinking, having unprotected sex) quite commonly without causing great alarm. Automatically considering such behaviors to be more objectionable just because someone is young runs into what the researchers call in their paper "a conundrum of defining risk (or dangerousness) based not on the objective attributes of the activity but on the person engaging in them."
Room for skepticism
Berns also acknowledges that the new study says nothing about causation, just like the gray matter studies. "Could someone whose brain develops earlier start to engage in adult activities earlier?" That is one possibility, he says, but it is also possible that "engaging in adult activities makes the brain mature faster," he says.
Not everyone thinks the new study will overturn thinking about the teenage brain. Developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg of Temple University says he has been aware of the Berns research for several years and that it is flawed. "There are findings from other studies that in some respects contradict these findings," Steinberg says. "For instance, it's been shown that individuals with more developed white matter tracts are less oriented toward immediate rewards and less susceptible to peer pressure”—meaning they are probably less prone to risk-taking.
Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California, Santa Barbara, one of the pioneers in modern neuroscience, sees the Berns study more positively. The large number of subjects makes the results hard to ignore, he says, and they need to be taken seriously. Says Gazzaniga: "So much for the much touted model that the tumultuous teenage brain is that way because it is not fully developed. Back to the drawing board again."
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25 Comments
Add CommentIt makes sense to me because risky situations demand very quick assessment and split-second responsiveness. As someone who has taken risks, and knows others who have, for most people, risk-taking is calculated. Each successful calculation provides more information about what the nervous system, muscles, skeletal structure and mind are capable of and pushing the boundaries is done gradually (as seen by those who do it but, perhaps not by those who observe). Testing boundaries becomes exciting and learning about what one can endure, experience, overcome, achieve prompts continued exploration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt makes sense to me because risky situations demand very quick assessment and split-second responsiveness. As someone who has taken risks, and knows others who have, for most people, risk-taking is calculated. Each successful calculation provides more information about what the nervous system, muscles, skeletal structure and mind are capable of and pushing the boundaries is done gradually (as seen by those who do it but, perhaps not by those who observe). Testing boundaries becomes exciting and learning about what one can endure, experience, overcome, achieve prompts continued exploration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have to disagree with the point of view here, firstly on the basis of statistics: 91 teens analysed in a system where their behavioral patterns appear to be tied to American and other similar cultures is not a thorough sampling by any stretch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, taking risks and living dangerously might be adult functions, but there is still the matter that teens appear incapable of understanding the nature and severity of the risks involved. This is better known as recklessness. How and why these patterns have become associated with brain maturity are beyond comprehension. A question to be asked here is whether the adult brain patterns are also taken from Americans, and how many were examined?
Also, Carolynne, risky situations require quick thinking; throwing oneself INTO risky situations does not. There are countless stories of premature death and injury among teens for risky behavior. If their brains were really as developed as adults', you'd think they would be better able to assess their present situation.
What about survivorship bias? How many fewer reckless adults are there because those that would have been reckless adults didn't survive their teen years. Further, in response to near death experiences, do high risk taking individuals become more or less prone to risk taking and does this differ between adults and adolescents?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis makes a great deal of sense (especially since they acknowledge the question of cause and effect). It's quite possible that the maturing pathways are creating a more adult brain, but the rest of the brain is playing 'catch-up', so the adult-like risk taking is there, but not yet the adult-like caution. I think a followup study should compare the myelin development of risk-taking teens and that of non-risk-taking teens. It's possible they will find not a difference in the level of development, but a difference in the location of development.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgalaxy_man, I appreciate your rebuttal. The article includes drugs in risky behavior. Children learn by pain and this continues throughout life. Throwing oneself into a risky situation DOES require spontaneous assessment and several factors impact outcome: amount of potential pain, who else is doing it (peer pressure) and how impaired one's judgment is because of substances (false courage). There's a delicate balance and most deaths are caused by error due to poor judgment as a result of being too high to appropriately assess the situation. No matter the case, I maintain that important information is gathered from every experience, adding to confidence and developing the neural net therefore maturing the brain...not emotions, not mentality but the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCongrats to those who understand the results. I'm puzzled and agree with GMan that the sample was small and US-centric.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI appreciate the statements in the article that brain function is influenced by (as well as influencing of) a person's behavior. (This makes sense to me - repeated patterns of brain activity reinforce neuron pathways).
Personally, I engaged in teenage (male) risky behavior as part of self-discovery and in an attempt to create an identity of a (mature), bold man. I did see the risks and could (to a fair degree) evaluate them, but my values were different from a child's or an adult's - ie. I blame social forces more than brain physiology.
As one who took risks as a teen, I can say there was one moment of time where the decision was made. After that moment there was little thought if the decision was without severe consequence. Each successive time would build more confidence regardless of the incidents that an outside observer would look at as reckless or dangerous. Some decisions were delayed, but once the moment came, there was not turning back. This came for all decisions from brain altering substances to sky diving.... decision process is straight forward, have fun...do it again. Once it wasn't fun, stop.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not sure I agree with the overall conclusion. Some parts of the brain may be more mature, but to state you are more "adult" implies that the white matter being measured is more important than other parts of the brain that may have not have been measured. Perhaps our more cautious friends had other areas that were better developed that were not studied by the author and we were just reckless due to one area of the brain that was more developed.
It is also possible that if one area of the brain develops faster than another the imbalance could result in a propensity for dangerous behaviour due to the inabiltiy to fully accept consequences as real.
My wife was very cautious (I didn't know her then, she tells me this and hopes our children are like she was). Did my entire brain mature faster and that's why I took risks? This seems like a real stretch conclusion, I would say much more research is needed before any conclusion can be drawn.
Anyway, interesting article.
That explains a lot. Great post.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm 52 and still love doing dangerous things but even more than when I was a teen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm 52 and love taking risks even more than when I was a teen and am basically bored if I'm either not coming up with either something mentally stimulating or taking a physical risk of some type.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think this follows more recent literature on working with At-Risk teens (teens who are engaging in high-risk behaviors such as substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, etc). Empirically teens who are in a category of "hard to reach," in that the traditional model of education/prevention is not effective, tend to be more engaged by programs/mentors/teachers who give them active choices and responsibilities. Giving at-risk teens the opportunity to create rules and consequences (in a structured setting) seems to be more effective than simply giving them a set of strict rules. It seems to follow that teens who are more "risky," or have behavioral difficulties, are simply ready for more (supervised) responsibility.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBoth Blechten and Carolynne are right. Risk taking requires and builds skills, but this doesn't mean maturity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe experiment doesn't prove more mature brains, it is just a brilliant case of multicorrelation.
I also was a risk-taking teen, and that certainly helps to develop certain brain circuits, and consequently the myelin that optimizes/perfects those circuits. But this doesn't necessarily mean maturity.
Let's make a reductio ad absurdum: if we take a toddler and start teaching him basket, soccer, golf and piano 20 hours a day, without even teaching him/her anything about risk-assessment or emotion management, at age 15 he/she will have developed super-honed coordination, equilibrium and skills. Consequently, he/she will have lots and lots of myelinated circuits (white matter), possibly more than a comparable kid that spent her childhood being taught about values, philosophy and social relationships. Does this mean the enfant prodige has a more mature brain? No, it just means he/she has more myielinated circuits, but who knows whether they are the ones that are important for what we call maturity.
The "experiment" was actually carried out a few times, with notable end products, and the maturity of some end products is well known: do we want to conclude that Mozart was a more mature teen than his peers? Yet I grant you that you would likely have found more myelin in his brain, because he had spent a much larger part of his life in deep learning sessions.
Reckless kids develop more myelin because for whatever reason (poor risk assessment, character, social pressures, ...) they put themselves into circumstances where they test their capabilities to the extreme, so if they don't die they learn and become better at them (building more white matter, since skill = myelin that insulates the circuits).
But what we call maturity is different from a generic high-leve skill. Maturity is about judgement, interdependence, selflessness, emotion control. In short, everything that allows us to respond to an environment in an appropriate manner.
By definition, then, if being reckless and taking excessive risks is not appropriate to the situation the teen was in, he/she is not mature, however many high-level skills he/she possesses. Period.
The incentive of sexual opportunity inspires basic competitive impulses. Teens are typically "stranded" without chances to compete in more adult styles, but are (culturally/socially) prematurely motivated. What's left? Competitive demonstrations of physical attributes considered to be "risky" or "reckless" behavior from the perspective of an "adult" frame of reference and comparison.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother view on the problem could be: are the brain of the adults as mature as they used to be? I find that these days, more and more of the 20 to 30 behave as if they were still teens...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe american (or western world) bias in the study, as presented in the report is quite obvious.
Could it be because risky behavior is evolutionarily adaptive? One theory is that risky behavior was promoted back in the day (men who took risks hunting and bought back game promoted the survival of the group were the ones that were picked by women so they can pass on their genes). Thus, could reckless behavior be a means of an adult-like brain ensuring the passing on of their genes? Whereas teens are like 'less mature' do not as yet care for such things? I believe it all ties together.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor myself, I engaged anything I thought interesting with great enthusiasm. I Still do. When younger, I would gage the risks based on my observance of others capabilities versus my own. Juggling the variables can be a healthy challenge. I would say the adult brain perception stated in the article has more to do with those individuals who carefully/correctly weigh all of the variables in proportion to the danger.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was never the sheep who blindly followed others idiocy. Even at a young age I knew my perceptions might be flawed. This being said, I also believe my strengths come from my continued inquisitiveness of everything I choose to focus on.
In my life, I have learned how to carve, fence, martial arts, horsemanship, vertical caving(static rope work), masonry, fluxbox(linux open source window manager) guitar and luthier work(many many saddles designed;) chess, sex(always more to learn there eh?), different religious and spiritual concepts, and much much more, most of these items far beyond a point of simple competence. A lot of these things have inherent dangers associated with them, and I have been injured at times. But what are the benefits? Extreme increase in reaction time both physically and mentally, increased intelligence in areas that have association with these skills, and most importantly, a understanding of my human limitations, liabilities, and flaws. My acceptance of these allows me focus with a chuckle. Good article.
Wow, yet another misinterpretation of results. Seems to happen a lot in Sci Am. The behaviors sampled, and the sampling method (self-report) suggest that these teens are simply more adult-like than their "immature" peers. Smoking, drinking, and unprotected sex are activities are that not considered particularly risky if engaged in by adults. Only if engaged in by teens, which is a value judgement engaged in by the rather naive, I fear, authors of this study. This study has simply proven that teens whose brains are more adult-like have behavior that is also more adult-like. And they are self-aware enough to report it honestly in a survey.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoes anyone happen to know where i can read the actual article/paper on this experiment, and not an article about the article like the one above
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis was not a behavioral study, therefore the fact that the so-called risk-taking teens were all from the US is not a statistical problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with this study is that the researchers assumed stereotypical American teen recklessness as the de facto definition of recklessness.
Another problem is that, the behaviors they define as reckless are also highly social behaviors, and the frontal cortex mostly what is responsible for all of our social behavior.
It is possible that any kind of frequent social behavior will be correlated with mature axonal mylenation and organization.
On that view, the so-called prudent students may be just as reckless but socially isolated.
Contrary to some of the comments left here, testing 91 teens is a "thorough sampling." Only 30+ testing subjects are needed for statistically significant results.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find the study, and/or the article about it so intuitively wrong that I have to ask: are we doing the milk leads to heroin correlational fallacy? We don't know the geometry overall of risk-taking behavior (which of course implies a knowledge and appraisal of risk.) In a way, the experimenters are asking blind people about color perception.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat constitutes "risky behavior" in any person's mind, adolescent or adult, depends on their perception. You may remember the study years ago that determined that people fear public speaking more than death. If that is true, an adolescent could feel more anxiety in Speech class than when engaging in what our society calls "risky behavior." For studies like this to have any relevance, they would have to measure what each individual is afraid of, and measure their risk-taking behavior when facing that particular fear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think risks are AWESOME!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat constitutes "risky behavior" in any person's mind, adolescent or adult, depends on their perception. You may remember the study years ago that determined that people fear public speaking more than death. If that is true, an adolescent could feel more anxiety in Speech class than when engaging in what our society calls "risky behavior." For studies like this to have any relevance, they would have to measure what each individual is afraid of, and measure their risk-taking behavior when facing that particular fear.
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