The adolescent brain and the adult brain have many similarities and differences. A difference that Richard Knox explains in his article between the teen brain and the adult brain is the white matter coating your nerves. “That’s because the nerve cells that connect teenagers’ frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don’t have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or “white matter,” that adults have in this area. Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another.” In other words, the reason teens' frontal part of the brain is slow is because they don’t have the …show more content…
This detail is important because it shows how thin or spotty myelin can affect the brain. Already we know that teens and adults have a major difference in myelin coating on the nerves in their brains, however it is inevitable to have some correspondence. “Imaging studies have shown that most of the mental energy that teenagers use in making decisions is located in the back of the brain, whereas adults do most of their processing in the frontal lobe [source: Wallis]. When teenagers do use the frontal lobe, it seems they overdo it, calling upon much more of the brain to get the job done than adults would” (Edmound). This means that adults and teenagers brains both make decisions, teens just use more brain than an adult would. This is important because it demonstrates that before the frontal part of the brain is mature, teens improvise and use a different part of the brain for decision making. Clearly there are many resemblances and distinction between the teen brain and an adult …show more content…
“During the teen years, under the influence of massive new hormonal messages, as well as current needs and experiences, the teenager's brain is being reshaped, and reconstructed. Information highways are being speeded up (a process called myelination), and some old routes, closed down (this is called pruning); some are re-routed and re-connected to other destinations.” (Robert Hedaya). This detail means that some synapses of your brain are becoming permanent while others are being removed and some are being reconnected to new places. This is important because it provides evidence of how teens interests, behaviour and the way they respond change. A deluge of myelination and pruning can affect adolescent’s behaviour, but what consequence does an immature brain have? A consequence of this is explained in Knox’s article. “This also may explain why teenagers often seem so maddeningly self-centered. ‘You think of them as these surly, rude, selfish people,’ Jensen says. ‘Well, actually, that’s the developmental stage they’re at. They aren’t yet at that place where they’re thinking about—or capable, necessarily, of thinking about the effects of their behavior on other people. That requires insight.’” This means that the reasons it seems like teens only think about themselves is because they are incapable of think about what their actions will do to other people. This detail is important because a it