Word: brained
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that MRI studies have cracked open a window on the developing brain, researchers are looking at how the newly detected physiological changes might account for the adolescent behaviors so familiar to parents: emotional outbursts, reckless risk taking and rule breaking, and the impassioned pursuit of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Some experts believe the structural changes seen at adolescence may explain the timing of such major mental illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These diseases typically begin in adolescence and contribute to the high rate of teen suicide. Increasingly, the wild conduct once blamed on "raging hormones" is being...
...recent years, Giedd has shifted his focus to twins, which is why the Manns are such exciting recruits. Although most brain development seems to follow a set plan, with changes following cues that are preprogrammed into genes, other, subtler changes in gray matter reflect experience and environment. By following twins, who start out with identical - or, in fraternal twins, similar - programming but then diverge as life takes them on different paths, he hopes to tease apart the influences of nature and nurture. Ultimately, he hopes to find, for instance, that Anthony Mann's plan to become a pilot and Brandon...
Before the imaging studies by Giedd and his collaborators at UCLA, Harvard, the Montreal Neurological Institute and a dozen other institutions, most scientists believed the brain was largely a finished product by the time a child reached the age of 12. Not only is it full-grown in size, Giedd explains, but "in a lot of psychological literature, traced back to [Swiss psychologist Jean] Piaget, the highest rung in the ladder of cognitive development was about age 12 - formal operations." In the past, children entered initiation rites and started learning trades at about the onset of puberty. Some theorists concluded...
...Giedd points out, "made studying healthy kids possible" because there's no radiation involved. (Before MRI, brain development was studied mostly by using cadavers.) Each of the Mann boys will be scanned three times. The first scan is a quick survey that lasts one minute. The second lasts two minutes and looks for any damage or abnormality. The third is 10 minutes long and taken at maximum resolution. It's the money shot. Giedd watches as Anthony's brain appears in cross section on a computer screen. The machine scans 124 slices, each as thin as a dime. It will...
Construction Ahead One reason scientists have been surprised by the ferment in the teenage brain is that the brain grows very little over the course of childhood. By the time a child is 6, it is 90% to 95% of its adult size. As a matter of fact, we are born equipped with most of the neurons our brain will ever have - and that's fewer than we have in utero. Humans achieve their maximum brain-cell density between the third and sixth month of gestation - the culmination of an explosive period of prenatal neural growth. During the final months...