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Teenage Mutant
Ninja Cortex
from the Boston Globe,
November 3, 2002 (featured at
www.educationnews.org)
For more articles visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
An article in the Oct. 2002 issue of
the journal "Brain and Cognition"
may offer a solution to one of mankind's last unsolved
mysteries: teen angst.
According to neuroscience researchers at San Diego State
University, moping, door-slamming, and a fondness for the
Insane Clown Posse could be symptoms of a temporary brain
disease. Having studied the ability of people between 10 to 22
years of age to quickly recognize other people's emotions,
psychology professor Robert McGivern and his team concluded
that adolescents may be impaired by ''a relative inefficiency
in frontal circuitry prior to the pruning of excess synaptic
contacts.''
Translation? Burgeoning nerve activity in the teenaged
prefrontal cortex makes it difficult for those entering
puberty to process basic social and emotional information -
which won't be news to their parents.
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