Transcript BrainSmart-GovSimcoe

Understanding the Adolescent
Brain
Presented by
Garfield Gini-Newman
Associate Professor
OISE/University of Toronto
[email protected]
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"The young people of today think of
nothing but themselves. They have no
reverence for parents or old age. They
are impatient of all restraint. They talk as
if they alone knew everything and what
passes for wisdom with us is foolishness
with them. As for girls, they are forward,
immodest and unwomanly in speech,
behaviour and dress."
Socrates c. 400 B.C.E.
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Wikipedia generation is lazy and
unprepared for university’s rigours, survey
of faculty says
Toronto Star, April 6, 2009
The evidence is strong that they [Net
Geners] are the smartest generation ever.
[They have] been given the opportunity to
fulfill their inherent human intellectual
potential as no other generation.
Don Tapscott, Grown Up Digital, 2009
Some recommended reading
Does a child's belief about intelligence
have anything to do with academic
success?
100 seventh graders, all doing poorly
in math, randomly assigned to
workshops
One workshop gave lessons on how
to study well.
The other taught about the nature of
intelligence and the brain.
Students in the latter group "learned
that the brain actually forms new
connections every time you learn
something new, and that over time,
this makes you smarter.”
By the end of the semester, the
group who had been taught that the
brain can grow smarter, had
significantly better math grades than
the other group.
Nurturing a Growth Mindset
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Fixed Mindset
See intelligence as fixed something you are born with
Success/failure is what is
expected
School is about
demonstrating your worth
Avoid challenges which may
not immediately yield
success
Growth Mindset
• see setbacks as a
challenge that motivate
• success is about
stretching oneself
• intelligence comes from
hard work
• School is an opportunity
to expand intelligence
Think of an Adolescent
You Know
Reflecting on an
adolescent you know,
how many characteristics
of the typical teenage can
you list?
Marching to a Different Circadian
Rhythm!
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Teens begin to secrete
melatonin, chemical
neurotransmitter which
makes us feel drowsy, 1
to 3 hours later and it
lingers on later in the
morning
Teens sleep needs far
exceed adults – they
need at least 9 hours
Teens are the most
sleep-deprived segment
of North American
society
Implications of Sleep Deprivation for
the Adolescent Learning
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Do less well in school
Experience a greater feeling of
sadness and hopelessness
Greater mood swings (less able
to control emotions)
Less able to process emotions
and are therefore prone to raw
emotional outbursts
Causes an elevated level of the
stress hormone, cortisol
Impairs ability to process
glucose which contributes to
obesity and type-2 diabetes –
both on the rise among North
American teens
Your Brain – “The Great
Inhibitor”
Brain development is essentially “progressive
inhibition”
As children grow their inhibition
machinery becomes more
finely tuned
Because the teens’ prefrontal
cortex is not fully developed
they are prone to more
impulsive behaviour
Social Relationships and the
Cerebellum
Until recently, the cerebellum was
assumed to control movement but
have little other significance
It now appears to be much more
important in a wide range of
behaviours including recognizing
social cues
Social Relationships and the
Cerebellum
The cerebellum appears to:
1) Be the least heritable part of the brain
(and therefore most shaped by the
environment)
2) Change throughout adolescence
3) Be the last area of the brain to finish
pruning and remodeling – even later
than the frontal lobes
Social Relationships and the
Cerebellum
What are the implications
and/or insights suggested
by this new understanding
of the cerebellum?
Emotions in Early Adolescence
As the brain matures, it
becomes more capable of
impulse control and is
better able at focused and
sustained attention.
“Everyone gets angry; everyone has felt a desire
for vengeance. The capacity to control impulses
that arise from these feelings is the function of
the prefrontal cortex…it takes many years for the
necessary biological processes to hone a
prefrontal cortex into an effective efficient
executive. The fifteen-year-old brain does not
have the biological machinery to inhibit impulses
in the service of long-range planning.
Daniel Weinberger, director of the Clinical Brain
Disorders Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health
Seeking Thrills
During adolescence increasing
levels of dopamine in the prefrontal
cortex appear to be offset by
decreases in the nucleus
accumbens and other reward
circuits.
Implications – teens with dopamine
depleted reward systems need a
greater stimulation to get the same
sense of satisfaction as a young
Neurons that fire together, wire
together!
Learning is a matter of making
connections.
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The Process of Long Term
Potentiation
When information (stimuli) is received, a trail
along a series of neurons is blazed making it
easier for subsequent messages to fire along the
same path. The more the path is re-fired the more
permanent the message or new learning
becomes.
Each time an activity is repeated the bonds
between neurons strengthen and expand, leading
to an entire network developing which remembers
the skill or information.
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Considering how the brain
learns...
...how and why is the behaviour
of an adolescent similar to that
of a 2 year old?
At both stages, the
brain is responding to...
...a massive build up of
connections and pruning away
excess connections allowing
for a more refined and
efficient brain.
Brain Sculpting
Imagine you have set out to capture
the essence of who you are in a
marble sculpture. Reflect back to
what life was like at age 11 or 12.
Walk yourself through the defining
experiences of your adolescence.
While doing so, imagine yourself
chipping away the excess marble to
allow for the emergence of your adult
self.
Shaping the mature brain
The brain sculpts itself through its
experience with the world.
Teenagers need to realize that the
brain is the only organ in the body
that is sculpted through
experience. What they are doing
with their brain now is going to
determine what their brain is
going
to become as an adult. 24
Pruning of the
Adolescent Brain
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Remember that...
“...if teens are doing music and sports
and academics, that’s how brains will
be hardwired. If they are doing video
games and MTV and lying on the
couch, that will be how they are
hardwired.”
Jay Giedd
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Myelination
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The Myelination Process
Understanding Myelination:
A Myelin is a fatty, waxy substance that wraps
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itself around the axon
Myelin insulates the axon so that the electrical
impulse travels more efficiently
The neurons you need to survive will myelinate
first
Before a neuron is myelinated it is called
immature
Myelination results in the creation of a more
efficient brain
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The Four Stages of Myelination
Development Stages
Myelin Release
Birth to 2 years
Parts of the Cerebellum, Parietal and Occipital
Lobes (Primary Motor control area, Visual
Processing Area, and Primary Sensory Area)
2 to 7 Years
7 to 12 years
Adolescence
Lobes dealing with speaking and
language comprehension
Temporal Lobe, Parietal Lobe and Cerebellum
(memory, integrating sensory data and movement)
Frontal Lobe (decision making, goal setting,
reasoning)
Important Observations for
Understanding Adolescence
The frontal lobes are the last
to be myelinated occurring
as
late as the early 20’s.
What adolescent behaviour
is
explained by this
observation?
What are the parenting
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implications of this
Teens need to solve problems and
practice decision making.
> Have teens apply learning to
solve “real challenges”
> Teach teens to use decision
making models
> Invite teens to consider
implications and cause and
consequence
> Involve teens in making
reasoned choices
How does the brain learn best?
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Through experiential learning requiring
children to move from the concrete to the
abstract
Through problem solving and decision making
Through allowing children to “fail forward”
Scaffolding - do not ask an adolescent to
multi-task until the learning has been
internalized
Physical and other activities that improve
coordination
These types of activities activate the area of
the brain responsible for critical thinking and
problem solving. The more we do with
adolescents which requires they solve
problems, the more we assist in strengthening
the area of the brain responsible for decision
making.
Teen’s Window of Opportunity:
The pre-frontal cortex
Window of Sensitivity
The flip side of the window of
opportunity is the window of sensitivity
While the “window” of development is
open, harmful effects can have
potentially greater impact
A young child how has several serious
ear infections may impair their ability
to distinguish sounds later in life, but
those same ear infections in an adult
will not have the same effect
Teens and the Window
of Sensitivity
Window of sensitivity to alcohol is wide
open for teens
potential damaging effects of alcohol
far greater for teens than for adults
Four Basic Emotions
Researchers generally agree
there are four basic emotions
and that all other emotions
are created from combinations
of these four.
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Fear
Anger
Sadness
Joy
Emotions, the Amygdala and
the Teenage Brain
Any information received by the brain
travels first to the amygdala
The amygdala holds emotional
memory - it tells you how you feel
about things
In the teenage brain, the amygdala is
developing faster than the frontal
lobes
So, teenagers tend to be reactive not
reflective
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Reading Facial Expressions
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“Emotion drives attention and
attention drives learning”
In her book Brain Matters, Pat Wolfe
noted:
“The brain is biologically
programmed to attend first to
information that has a strong
emotional content. It is also
programmed to remember this
information longer.”
What happens when the brain gets
hijacked by negative emotions?
The body is readied for the fight
or flight response. The body is
primed with adrenaline preparing
it for the fastest physical reaction.
The hypothalamus activates the
amygdala, which in turn
produces anger, rage, or
threatening behaviour.
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Ten Strategies for Guiding the
Adolescent Brain
1. Take care of the brain with proper sleep,
hydration, nutrition – and avoid caffeine after
noon and beware the dangers of substance
abuse.
2. Encourage extra curricular activities which
develop social skills, physical fitness, problem
solving, and encourage reading.
3. Be clear, explicit and avoid asking teens to
multi-task.
4. Assist children in learning to chunk
information.
5. Encourage problem solving, making
connections, and involve children in
identifying the problems in their actions
and assist them in seeing the
consequences.
6. Natural and logical consequences are
preferable to punitive measures
7. Whenever possible, encourage children
to build on their interests and talents –
remember that intelligence is the ability to
solve problems or create a product of
value.
8. Recognize that emotions dominate and
that teens are more likely to react than to
reflect – assist them in making wise
choices and avoid anger as a response.
9. Assist children in their learning by helping
them move from the concrete to the
abstract and remember that “being there”
is the most powerful way to learn.
10. Above all, be patient – remember
teenage brain is a
work in progress!