Science is now able to explain to us what happens in the brain when the adolescent strengthens his social skills to become an adult.
Adolescence is a period of major change in our lives. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in her book America day by day“IAdolescence is the passage between the given world of childhood and the existence of a man to be founded”. Researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and the College of London (United Kingdom) have precisely observed how the brain evolves when we cross this bridge between adolescence and adulthood. Their results were published on their websites respective.
They first studied the brain activity of 298 healthy young people, aged 14 to 25, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a cutting-edge technology. Sessions were held one to three times approximately 6 and 12 months apart. Each time, the participants lay down quietly, letting the researchers analyze the pattern of connections of the different regions of their brain while it was at rest.
This cerebral “mic mac” that makes us become adults
The team has discovered over time that functional brain connectivity (the way different brain regions communicate with each other) changes in two ways with age. Initially, the areas of the brain governing vision, movement and other basic faculties are strongly connected to each other at the age of 14 and are more so at the age of 25. Which, in fact, turns out to be rather positive.
Secondly, the researchers observed that the connection between the brain regions that make it possible to imagine how another person thinks or what they feel evolve differently: weak connections at the time of adolescence would be reinforced with age. age, and conversely, those who were strong would weaken.
Do not panic, we explain to you: the researchers observed high levels of metabolic activity, generally associated with a remodeling of the connections between nerve cells. It is therefore according to this “mic mac” that new networks are formed in our brain, allowing us to acquire and strengthen our social skills to become adults.
Better understand mental disorders in young people
Besides the fact that these observations give us a better understanding of brain evolution, they could also allow researchers to better understand the formation of mental illnesses.
“We know that depression, anxiety and other mental disorders often first occur in adolescence, but we don’t know how,” says Professor Ed Bullmore, head of Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry and co – author of the study. These results therefore show us that the re-modeling of brain networks takes place during adolescence, but can also give us a deeper understanding of the causes of mental illness in young people.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “theental health problems account for 16% of the global burden of disease and injury among young people aged 10-19”. Half of these mental disorders appear before the age of 14, but are often neither detected nor treated. Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of morbidity and disability among adolescents and suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-19 year olds.
“When left untreated, adolescent mental health issues have physical and mental consequences well into adulthood, limiting their ability to lead fulfilling lives.” We therefore hope that this study will be, as its authors hope, the outline of future more extensive work on mental disorders in young people.
.
