More on Teens and Their Amazing (and unpredictable) Brains

NPR has delivered another great author interview with a psychologist who has written a book about the teenage brain.  Dr. Frances Jensen has updated research in the book, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults.

The interview deals with addiction, binge drinking and marijuana use and its impact on the teenage brain, the effects of constant access to stimuli, and brain myelination.

There are many neuro books out there, but this one is highlighting recent research to assist in our understanding of those in our charge.




The NPR interview can be found at this link:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/28/381622350/why-teens-are-impulsive-addiction-prone-and-should-protect-their-brains

The book can be purchased here:

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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National Sleep Awareness Week

March 1-8 2009 is National Sleep Awareness Week. The National Sleep Foundation has created the week as "a public education, information, and awareness campaign that coincides with the return of Daylight Saving Time, the annual "springing forward" of clocks that can cause Americans to lose an hour of sleep." You will lose that hour of sleep this year in the wee hours of March 8 as DST kicks in.

Why not take this time to educate your student body and faculty about the importance of sleep? There are many resources on teens and sleep including this PBS Frontline series (which can be viewed in its entirety online), an interview with teen sleep guru Mary Carskadon at the same site. a nice teen sleep research page and info on the school start time study at the University of Minnesota.

EDIT: Be aware that the word "vicious" is misspelled in the graphic at the top (before some wise guy points it out to you first period!).

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Psych in the news

In an op-ed column on race, Charles Blow focuses on Harvard's Implicit Association Test and the findings that most whites "harbor a hidden bias" against blacks. Direct links to the tests are here ... and here's a 2006 column (and follow-up blog post) by John Tierney presenting the evidence against the IAT. (All from the NY Times)

A new paper in the Journal of Social Issues shows that multiracial adolescents who identify proudly as multiracial fare as well as — and, in many cases, better than — kids who identify with a single group, even if that group is considered high-status (like, say, Asians or whites). (Time)

Newsweek traces the history of the alleged autism-vaccination link in its Anatomy of a Scare.

Researchers found in a small study of 30 young iPod users that teens not only tend to play their music louder than adults but, often, are unaware of how loud they're playing it, and are thus unaware of their risk of subsequent hearing loss. (Time)

The FDA approves deep brain stimulation as a treatment for OCD. (Chicago Tribune)

And finally, this is just sad. Not only did research show the men view bikini-clad women as objects (based on 21 Princeton boys as subjects) but no one has actually bothered to see if the same is true in reverse ("women may also depersonalize men in certain situations, but published research on the subject has not been done"). Sigh. (CNN)

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Psych in the news

Eating a Mediterranean diet appears to lower risk for mental decline, and may help prevent Alzheimer’s in people with existing memory problems, new research suggests. (NY Times)

Stanford University has put a series of engaging lectures up on YouTube where some of its leading researchers discuss cutting-edge cognitive science research. (Mindhacks)

Lengthy television viewing in adolescence may raise the risk for depression in young adulthood, according to a new report. (NYT)

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations that often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality. (via Boing Boing)

If you’re like most people with an English speaking background you rated Hnegripitrom as more dangerous than Magnalroxate ... what is the link between ease of pronunciation and how our brain judges risk? (Very Evolved)

Internet sites that facilitate diet betting have seen an increase in traffic ... diet bets work for many people who couldn’t seem to shed pounds any other way. (NYT)

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