What were they thinking ? The teen age brain
As a parent who has survived 4 teenagers, Chantilly and Centreville area lawyer Doug Landau has seen first hand what neuroscientists are discovering about teenagers’ brains. It’s not, as comedian Bill Cosby asserts, that “they have brain damage !’ Rather, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected.
According to a recent NPR report, it’s not that teens don’t have a frontal lobe. They do. And they can use it. But they’re going to access it more slowly. 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.
When discussing nerve and brain injury with his own car crash and traumatic brain injury clients, Landau has described it as “insulation on an electrical wire.” Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty, incomplete or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another. Social Security Disability clients with demyelinating diseases suffer an inability to control nerve impulses, often resulting in motor function loss or spasticity. For the full transcript or podcast of this superb news report or to download a podcast, go to NPR.