The adolescent brain: Insights from neuroimaging

Abstract

Adolescence is a time of dramatic changes in body, behavior, and brain. Although the adolescent brain has different features than those of a child or mature adult, it is not broken or defective. The changes in the teen brain have been exquisitely forged by evolution to facilitate the survival of our species. During the second decade of life the brain does not mature by becoming larger; it matures by becoming more specialized and its subcomponents becoming more “interconnected.” Recent advances in neuroimaging and the application of graph theoretical methods of analysis are enabling scientists to characterize these changes in connectivity and how they vary by age, sex, health/illness, and other cognitive or behavioral measures.