Inventing ourselves
the secret life of the teenage brain
Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne
creator
text
bibliography
enk
2019
2018
monographic
eng
240 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm.
Our personalities, aspirations and dreams are all established in our brains. It creates every feeling, emotion and desire we experience, and stores every one of our memories. And yet, until very recently, we believed that it stopped developing in childhood; that by the time you reached adolescence, your brain was fully developed. In Inventing Ourselves, award-winning neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore reveals that this is simply not the case. There are fundamental differences between the adult and adolescent brain, and typical teenage behaviour - risk taking, intense relationships, going to bed and getting up late - is caused by the transformations that take place during this formative period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these physiological changes are most evident in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for decision-making, planning, inhibiting inappropriate behaviour, evaluating risk and understanding others. While working in a psychiatric hospital in Versailles, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore was struck by the realisation that every patient first experienced symptoms during this pivotal period. Why is this? What happens to our brains during our teenage years? And what makes adolescent brains particularly vulnerable to illnesses such as schizophrenia? With implications for education, parenting and treating mental health conditions, Inventing Ourselves will transform the way we think about adolescence and reveal that the changes we experience throughout our teenage years dictate the adults we become.
1. Adolescence isn't an aberration. - 2. A sense of self. - 3. Fitting in. - 4. Inside the skull. - 5, Inside the living brain. - 6. The ever-plastic brain. - 7. Social mind, social brain. - 8. Understanding other people. - 9. The right sort of risks. - 10. When things go wrong. - 11. Educating the brain. - 12. It's the journey that matters. - Notes. - Acknowledgements. - Illustration sources. - Index.
adult
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore.
Originally published: 2018.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ADOLESCENCE
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
PSYCHOLOGY
NEUROSCIENCES
9781784161347 (paperback)
be2019011574
AU@
171107
20190716111918.0
on1096253818
eng