| ■ Brain Changes Affect Teen Behavior | 2008.03.31 |
| Natural changes in adolescents' brains affect their cognition, emotion and behavior, say U.S. National Institute of Mental Health researchers, who used MRI to examine the brains of volunteers. The researchers found that brain gray matter increases in volume until the early teens, then decreases until old age. The findings appear in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. "Adolescence is a time of substantial neurobiological and behavioral change, but the teen brain is not a broken or defective adult brain," wrote researcher Dr. Jay N. Giedd. The findings come from the NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project, which began in 1989. |