Nimitha’s Reviews > The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults > Status Update

Of all the countries in the world, the only two not to have signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a binding international treaty outlawing the sentencing of juveniles to life in prison without parole, are Somalia and the United States.

As of today the distinction goes to USA alone.

What scientists do know is that the brain, at any time in its life but especially during adolescence, is a product of both nature and nurture, including all the exposures, stresses, and stimulations of a person’s environment.

The differences do raise some questions as to whether in certain circumstances we should consider some gender-based high school curricula. Given the couple of years’ disparity between peak cortical volume in girls versus boys, one might predict that girls, who reach specific levels of cognitive development before boys, could benefit more from math and science courses at earlier ages.

“This is worrisome,” Dr. Wang of Ohio State told the media, “because students begin to feel like they need to have the TV on or they need to continually check their text messages or computer while they do their homework. It’s not helping them, but they get an emotional reward that keeps them doing it.

“They felt satisfied not because they were effective at studying, but because the addition of TV made the studying entertaining. The combination of the activities accounts for the good feelings obtained.”

First, the gamers group scored much higher on tests for risk-taking. Next, functional MRI showed less connectivity to the gamers’ frontal lobes, but more connectivity in areas that have been observed in nicotine addiction,

A study published in China in 2012 looked at seventeen adolescents who met the definition of gaming addiction and compared their brain scans with those of twenty-four nongamers of similar gender, age, and educational level.

The compulsive need 2be digitally connected happens on 2 levels,behaviorally&biochemically. Every ring,ping,beep& burst of song fr a smartphone results in an “Oh, wow” moment in the brain. When the new text message/post is opened,the discovery is like a digital gift; it releases a pleasurable rush of dopamine in the brain. There is mounting evidence that Internet addiction has much in common with substance addiction.

The cascade of neuroprocesses that kicks off the brain’s reward circuitry and the rush of the pleasure chemical dopamine can be triggered just as easily by the release of the latest iPhone as by alcohol, pot, sex, or a fast car. In some ways, technology is a drug.