Read and see Jay Giedd how he speaks about the neuroscience of the teenbrain

Interview with Jay Giedd
What has surprised you about looking at the adolescent brain?
The most surprising thing has been how much the teen brain is changing. By age six, the brain is already 95 percent of its adult size. But the gray matter, or thinking part of the brain, continues to thicken throughout childhood as the brain cells get extra connections, much like a tree growing extra branches, twigs and roots. In the frontal part of the brain, the part of the brain involved in judgment, organization, planning, strategizing -- those very skills that teens get better and better at -- this process of thickening of the gray matter peaks at about age 11 in girls and age 12 in boys, roughly about the same time as puberty.
Read more on the website......

or watch the film:



Read more about Jay Giedd, his findings and the discussion about the development of teenbrains:

A critical article about the neuroscientific way of description -
Are Teens Just Wired That Way?
Researchers Theorize Brain Changes Are Linked to Behavior
Shankar Vedantam Washington Post Staff Writer , June 3, 2001; Page A1
Neuroscientist Jay Giedd was studying the brains of healthy teenagers when he noticed something odd: The brains appeared to change in unexpected ways as the youths matured through adolescence. …..

A site about the teenbrain
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/

Discussion site about the teenbrain – different scientists and their opinions...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work/


Related links on this blog in german speech:
Pubertät (1): Was hat der Neurotransmitter "Dopamin" mit der Pubertät zu tun?
Pubertät (2) "Hirnentwicklung in der Pubertät"

Culture influences brain function

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/psychology-0111.html
(Diesen Artikel finden Sie im Blog Neuropädagogik in deutscher Sprache:http://www.scienceblogs.de/neuropaedagogik/2008/01/hirnfunktionen-hangen-von-kulturkreis-ab.php
Note:
The different perception processes could be to due also to the following circumstances:

First the childlike perception is graphically shaped. In the European and American culture area figurative perception dominance becomes increasingly more abstract by the school attendance, so that the figurative perception ability suffers and humans of this culture area on visual tasks of perception must spend more brain capacities. In the asiatic culture area the graphic perception is continued to train also after the first day at school by its figurative writing language. This could explain additionally, why the Asians altogether have less strong brain activities by comparing pictures.