THE TEEN BRAIN EXPLAINED - Jennifer Pfeifer #86

About this episode

This episode explores the adolescent brain and the factors influencing teen behavior and mental health, featuring insights from neuroscientist Jennifer Pfeiffer.

Are our preconceptions about teen behaviour true? What can we learn from the psychology and neuroscience of teen development to help support them rather than blame them? Are mobile phones and social media responsible for the jump in youth mental health issues? In this episode we have the topic of the adolescent brain to get the up to date science on. So we’re going to be testing our preconceptions about teenagers, and comparing the evidence base from research, to what we’ve come to believe through friends, family and heresay. So, we get into the development of the brain during puberty; just what behaviour hormones are and aren’t responsible for; whether the late completion of the frontal cortex, responsible for self control and reasoning, affects their ability to make important decisions; the consequences of social connection circuits developing for their sense of belonging or exclusion; the alarming rise in mental health issues among young people over the past 15 years, and whether the research supports recent claims that digital devices and social media are largely responsible. Fortunately to navigate these choppy waters we have the co-director for Center for Translational…

People in this episode

Host: Freddy Drabble

Guest: Jennifer Pfeiffer

Topics covered

• teen behavior
• adolescent brain
• mental health
• neuroscience
• psychology
• social media
• puberty

Keywords

• teen brain
• mental health issues
• social media impact
• puberty
• self control
• decision making
• social connection

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Oregon, National Scientific Council on Adolescence

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