Question

What are the changes in the adolescent brain? How is each change reflected in adolescent behavior?

Answer 1

Adolescence is a period in which the need for establishing new social and personal relationships and reaching independence and reproductive success is supported by dramatic hormonal, neural and behavioral changes. Similar to other developmental dynamic processes, changes in brain circuits during adolescence are an integral part of genetically programmed developmental processes. During adolescence changing levels of cognitive abilities, impulse control, language and motor coordination show great plasticity to allow for the transition to mature behavior and cognition.

In the early postnatal years the brain experiences an exponential increase in the numbers of synapses, dendritic and axonal branches and myelination that result in dramatic increases of brain size.Later in childhood there is a stabilization of brain size and the number of synapses, although myelination continues to expand into several brain areas and white matter connecting the prefrontal cortex to other brain regions appears to increase. In fact, during adolescence the volume of frontal gray matter as visualized by structural MRI has been described to decrease while white matter steadily increases

As far as reflection of behaviour is concerned Higher stress sensitivity during adolescence is proposed to be an important link between environmental influences and the manifestation of psychiatric disorders, particularly psychosis.