Hi teens (lurking parents, the title is not an oxymoron!) -

In a recent issue of Newsweek magazine (Feb. 28, 2000, pages 58-59) was an article titled "Getting inside a teen brain" that made reference to some pretty amazing findings in the field of Neuroscience in the last few months. And they have direct bearing on you all, on how you learn to understand yourselves, how parents understand you, on how friends understand each other,and on your recovery from OCD. I won't quote the whole article, but here's a summary with annotations that I think are important:

We (neuroscientists, my first training) used to think that all creation of the brain cells called neurons was finished by the time human beings were about 18 months old (there are other brain cells called glial cells, but that's a whole other story). But last year several groups (including researchers at UCLA and McLean Hospital in Boston) looked into this using brain imaging techniches like MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). They found that about 95% of the brain's adult volume is reached by the time you are 5 years old. But they found some very surprising things as well:

1. The corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the right and left hemispheres, continues to grow right into your 20s. This brain structure has been implicated in intelligence and self-awareness.

2. The frontal lobes grow measurably between ages 10-12, and then the unused connections are "pruned back" over the next decade. This part of the brain is responsible, in part, for impulse-control, judgement, emotional regulation, creative and worrisome thoughts, sesory integration and planning.

3. The parietal lobes, which also integrate sensory information from your eyes, ears, skin, etc., are still maturing through mid-teen years.

4. The temporal lobes, the areas responsible for emotional control and language development, reach their maximum volume about age 16, and get pruned back thereafter.

Hormones might be part of the regulation that causes this regrowth and trimming of connections. But an important realization comming out of this research is that kids have a new growth of brain cells during puberty, mostly grey matter cells, and the next ten years or so are spent deciding which paths are used (and therefore saved), and which ones are unused (and therefore pruned back). Use it or lose it, as they say. Well, for OCD recovery, this means that the teenage years are some of the best years to decide to retrain your brain to carry on the thoughts you want, while learning to ignore the ones you don't want. This means NOW is the best time to challege your OCD! That's true at any point in life, but you teens have a biological advantage over people at other ages. Having lots of new brain cells that aren't yet connected well might mean that it feels confusing and frustrating to be a teen (duh!), as if suddenly your quiet conversation with one or two other people in a big room were suddenly joined by hundreds of others, all with opinions. But taking the time to actively quiet the opinions you don't want (ignoring the thoughts that don't serve you well) will result in strengthened brain pathways for those thoughts you DO want. It's really the opportunity of a lifetime,as we understand it now.

That doesn't mean that you can't beat your OCD later - you can. But it means if you work on it now, you're more likely to make lasting changes because you have biology on your side. Pretty exciting stuff, and for all those parents out there that don't understand why your teens don't act like adults, this is one reason why not. They're not supposed to!! Teens are supposed to try out new things, new ideas and thoughts and identities, to decide what pathways in their brains will be useful for saving later. Of course, if you spend too much time now with activities that won't serve you well in the future (like watching TV or playing video games), you'll be reinforcing pathways that will be harder to reform later. But more on that another time.

Cheers,

dr(no new brain cells under my)hat