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Title: The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids
ISBN: 0385721609
Author:
Barbara Strauch
Publicate Date: 2004-09-14
Publish: 2004-09-14
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $7.50
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: I couldn't finish it
This book was so relentlessly repetitive in stating the subject of discussion that I had to skip to the final chapter to search for conclusions. I usually finish a book or movie but this stands out as a real bomb. Great topic, I wish I could get my $ back.
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2: Adolescence partially explained
This book provides a series of relatively recent findings on brain development, during adolescence, and connects those changes with behavior patterns seen in many teenagers. Some of the findings discussed are interesting, but not startling, while others are quite remarkable, and go a long way toward helping us understand our children better. If you think this book sounds too dry for you, it isn't! Please read on.
What led to the new findings? New technology, that is much less invasive, now allows scientists to study the human brain in action, without harm to the subjects. This technology consists mainly of different forms of brain scans. With the ethical dilemma, of balancing harm versus gain, rendered virtually moot, researchers became free to run studies of healthy adolescent volunteers, with informed subject and parental consent, of course. This opened up the possibility of creating an accurate baseline, against which the brain functioning of adolescents, with already-documented neurological and/or psychopathological disorders, could be compared. There had already been ongoing research of the functioning of the human brain, where the subjects had diagnosed pathology, but it had to be done post-mortem, to avoid causing further harm.
One of the key findings discussed in this book, involves the neuroanatomical term exuberance. In this context, exuberance means a sudden, rapid, dramatic growth of brain cells, especially in the pre-frontal cortex, where evidence indicates many key aspects of thinking, like logic, decision-making, and problem-solving are seated. Post-mortem research has long shown an interesting pattern in the growth of the human brain between birth and age ten or so. At birth, the human brain has approximately the same number of cells as an adult brain, but the brain undergoes dramatic growth, over the first two years or so, coinciding with the dramatic rate of learning and exploring the world that occurs during that time, for most children. That dramatic spurt of brain growth is termed exuberance by brain researchers. Then, from ages three through ten or so, the human brain undergoes reorganization and many of the new cells die off, especially those that are not being used. By age ten, the number of brain-cells is back to adult-normal.
Scientists thought that was the end of the story, until the new studies on non-pathological adolescents came out. What they found, using the new, non-invasive scans of healthy adolescents, was that the phenomenon of exuberance occurs all over again, beginning in the early stages of puberty. There is a new wave of dramatic brain growth, starting around ages ten to twelve. This rapid growth of brain cells, is followed by years of reorganization within the brain, with resulting new-found abilities, and significant changes in behavior, thinking, and moods. The growth spurt of the brain again occurs mainly in the pre-frontal cortex. This parallels the time period wherein many teenagers begin displaying whole new abilities to see and understand things, often along with sometimes-dramatic changes in their mood stability and behavior patterns. Remember, the pre-frontal cortex is the home of such brain functions as logic, decision-making, and problem-solving.
The findings related to exuberance are the most startling ones reported in this book, but many other studies are described, including studies on other areas of the brain. For each one, the author does an excellent job of providing both technical and plain-English explanations. The research and the explanations are not the heart of this book, though. What makes it useful and good is Ms. Strauch's blend of anecdotes and non-technical descriptions of how all this new neurological information connects with the behavior patterns found in adolescents. In many ways, this book goes a long way to connect the concept of formal operations, proposed by Jean Piaget in the 1920s, to the organic bases for many of the changes involved in formal operations. Ms. Strauch, who is the medical science and health editor for The New York Times, also deftly blends in how environment and learning influences and interacts with the changes going on in the adolescent brain, thus balancing nature and nurture factors well. It is this humanizing aspect of the writing that helps the reader readily connect science with everyday life.
After the introductory chapters, subsequent chapters cover a wide range of common phenomena in human adolescence, and how they relate to the new scientific information. The topics covered include things like changes in learning ability, understanding and using irony and more sophisticated forms of humor, decreased mood stability, increases in unpredictable behavior, increased risk-taking, increased social behavior, changes in sleep patterns, sexuality and love, the short-term and long-term impact of substance abuse on brain development, and the adolescent onset of some forms of psychopathology.
Overall, this is an excellent book to help parents, teachers, and anyone who interacts with adolescents. I am a clinical psychologist who works with children and teenagers in a mental health clinic, and I believe that the information in The Primal Teen will help me and my colleagues become more effective in our work, by adding a whole new level of understanding of adolescent behavior to what we have learned in our education and our experience. I can also say that this book rings true with many things I have seen over the years.
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3: Why do teens do what they do
WOW. Did you ever wonder why teens do crazy things? We as adults are many times perplexed as to some of the things our teens do. We think "Don't they know better?" My daughter used to spend time doing homework and then not turn it in the next day. When asked why she did not turn the work in, she would reply "i don't know" I could not fathom this. After reading this book it makes so much more sense. As a counselor at a high school, I am amazed at what teens do. I now have some idea and it makes sense.
I recommend this book to all the parents and staff I work with in understanding the teenager. Well worth the money.
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4: Yet Another Ridiculous Parenting Book
The is yet another book premised on the assumption that your teen (or child) is some kind of alien. Remember -- you were once a child and a teen yourself, and your child will eventually be an adult, and maybe even a parent. Just relate to your child as a person, and forget about this book.
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5: A must-read for every parent!
As parents of teens, we tend to think that--by now--we have pretty much figured out what makes our kids tick...hormones, immaturity, psicological issues...right? Well, maybe that is only part of the picture. This books does a wonderful job of going beyond that, to the neurological foundation of behavior itself. It clearly explains the ramifications of the changes that are going on at a neurological level in the brain of teens and how that, consequently, translates into "teen behavior".
Your kid is not "crazy"...their frontal cortex just needs more time to develop! A reassuring read for every parent!
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