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The negative side effects of Ecstasy are considerable—confusion, agitation, irregular heartbeat, seizures, sleep disorders, liver and brain damage, and of course death

This is not minor or incidental. These brain regions are used every day for basic cognitive tasks, whether it’s abstract thinking, the ability to change one’s behavior in relation to changing demands in the environment, or the inhibition of inappropriate responses.

Adolescent brains are not as resilient as adult brains when it comes to marijuana. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to the drug because they are at a critical stage in the development of two of the most sophisticated part of their brains—the frontal and prefrontal cortex—and these are precisely the parts most affected by marijuana.

A study done in Great Britain found evidence to support the conclusion that cannabis use was an important causal factor in the development of schizophrenia and that smoking marijuana doubles the risk of psychosis.

Marijuana use has also been observed to inhibit functioning in the areas of the cortex that play a critical role in recognizing errors, specifically insight into one’s own thoughts and behavior. Neurologists and neuroscientists have associated the inability to detect errors with several psychopathologies, including the psychotic delusions of schizophrenia

There are more problems with the amygdala the day after smoking pot, too. Having already been overstimulated by THC, the amygdala now has fewer cannabinoid receptor sites; this means it takes more than the normal amount of stimulation to get the brain interested in learning something new. How to do it? By smoking more pot, of course.

The pyramidal cells specifically help the hippocampus send autobiographical memories—memories of our experiences—into long-term storage. Alcohol blocks the ability of these hippocampal pyramidal cells to do their job, preventing the brain from forming autobiographical memories

Alcohol has been shown to affect the size and efficiency of the prefrontal cortex, the site of executive functioning, as well as the hippocampus, so vital to learning and memory. In fact, researchers have shown a direct correlation between hippocampal volume and the age of onset of alcohol abuse. The earlier the use—and the longer the abuse—the smaller thehippocampus

A group of researchers at Duke showed that in rats, nicotine exposure during adolescence damaged the pathways producing serotonin in the brain. As a result, there was less serotonin, and as serotonin deficiency is one of the leading mechanisms of depression, that may explain why depression is more frequent in people who have been heavy smokers as teens

Astonishingly, the Florida State researchers found that even a single day of smoking cigarettes in adolescence can be enough to trigger a depression-like state later in adulthood.

One of the surprising things I’ve learned about sleep deprivation and teenagers is that it can lead to increased cigarette use. More surprisingly still, I learned that cigarette smoking can cause a variety of cognitive and behavioral problems, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and memory loss, and it has been associated with lower IQ in teenagers.

Excavations clearly prove that the authors of the Harappan civilization ate cattle flesh, of which the relevant archaeological evidence is spread over a vast area covering Sind, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kutch, Saurashtra and coastal Gujarat.

The response of historical scholarship to the communal perception of Indian food culture, therefore, has been sober and scholars have drawn attention to the textual evidence on the subject which, in fact, begins to be available in the oldest Indian religious text Rgveda, supposedly of divine origin.

The communalists who have been raising a hullabaloo over the cow in the political arena do not realize that beef eating remained a fairly common practice for a long time in India and that the arguments for its prevalence are based on the evidence drawn from our own scriptures and religious texts.

Re-reading it after learning the news that the BJP government in West Bengal is reviving old cattle slaughter laws to restrict meat consumption.
Why can't Hindutva leaders leave food choices to the people?

This book should be made mandatory at the school level if we have any dream of grooming a generation with civic sense rather than religious followers.

Heightened positive emotions or states of arousal are indicators of a likeliness to engage in risk-taking behavior; this may be why in casinos a person who is surrounded by free alcohol and food is more likely to take a spin of the roulette wheel or a pull on a slot machine.

Addiction, therefore, is more strongly “hardwired” into the adolescent brain, and as rehabilitation centers well know, detox is much harder and fails more often in adolescents, too.

As a result, these very plastic and active synapses respond by strengthening their connections, which causes more dopamine to be released in response to each stimulating experience. Hence the craving builds much faster in the adolescent brain than in the adult brain: neurons are more active to start with and have an exaggerated plasticity in response to exposure to the addictive stimulus.

addiction is really a specialized form of memory. It is a form of synaptic plasticity, or LTP, except that the action is not in the hippocampus but in the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area—key areas for the reward circuit. Just like LTP and memory, addiction happens because a drug or another pleasurable stimulus strongly activates these synapses.

Novelty and sensation-seeking seem to motivate every act. And if it’s not about risk-taking, then it’s about rebellion—against parents, against teachers, against anyone in authority. Evolutionarily, this kind of behavior makes sense. Adolescence is the time of life when the young separate from the comfort and safety of their parents in order to explore the world and find independence.

Melatonin, a hormone critical to inducing sleep, is released two hours later at night in a teenager’s brain than it is in an adult’s. It also stays in the teenager’s system longer, and this is why it’s so hard to wake your high schooler up in the morning. Adults, on the other hand, have almost no melatonin in their system when they wake up and therefore don’t have the same groggy feeling.

Bedtime isn’t simply a way 4 the body to relax & recoup after a hard day of working, studying, or playing. It’s the glue that allows us not only 2 recollect our experiences but also to remember everything we’ve learned that day. Sleep isn’t a luxury. Memory & learning are thought 2b consolidated during sleep, so it’s a requirement 4 adolescents and as vital to their health as the air they breathe & the food they eat

The good news about brain plasticity is that it may peak in childhood and adolescence but it never entirely stops—at least not until we do. The more you learn, the easier it is to learn the next thing.

Adults also have less glutamate and dopamine and fewer receptors available; therefore they are less cognitively flexible.

adolescents have less ability to process negative information than adults do, and so they are less inclined not to do something risky, and less likely to learn from the ensuing mistake or misadventure, than adults are.

adolescents have less ability to process negative information than adults do, and so they are less inclined not to do something risky, and less likely to learn from the ensuing mistake or misadventure, than adults are.

Your teenagers are knowledgeable and self-aware enough to know that they are not automatons, and this means they have the capacity to modify and the responsibility for modifying their own behavior. This is what you must remind them—and then remind them again and again and again