Slashdot Mirror
Teens' Penchant For Risk-Taking May Help Them Learn Faster, Says Study (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The teenage brain has been characterized as a risk-taking machine, looking for quick rewards and thrills instead of acting responsibly. But these behaviors could actually make teens better than adults at certain kinds of learning. "In neuroscience, we tend to think that if healthy brains act in a certain way, there should be a reason for it," says Juliet Davidow, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University in the Affective Neuroscience and Development Lab and the lead author of the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Neuron. But scientists and the public often focus on the negatives of teen behavior, so she and her colleagues set out to test the hypothesis that teenagers' drive for rewards, and the risk-taking that comes from it, exist for a reason. When it comes to what drives reward-seeking in teens, fingers have always been pointed at the striatum, a lobster-claw-shape structure in the brain. When something surprising and good happens -- say, you find $20 on the street -- your body produces the pleasure-related hormone dopamine, and the striatum responds. But the striatum isn't just involved in reward-seeking. It's also involved in learning from rewards, explains Daphna Shohamy, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University who worked on the study. She wanted to see if teenagers would be better at this type of learning than adults would. To test this, Shohamy and her colleagues used an fMRI scanner to watch brain activity in a group of adults and teenagers. They were looking at the striatum, but also in a different part of the brain called the hippocampus. The hippocampus (which looks like, and is named after, a seahorse) helps people remember things like dates and times: the who, what, when and where. As the adults and teens had their brains scanned, they played a game that rewarded players for guessing correctly. Between questions, participants saw random pictures of neutral objects. As expected, the reward-hungry teenagers figured out the game faster than the adults did. Surprisingly, the striatum was equally active in both teenagers and adults. But in teens, it also worked closely with their hippocampus.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Please stop irritating me in movie theaters. Thank you.
The teenage brain has been characterized as a risk-taking machine, looking for quick rewards and thrills instead of acting responsibly
The teenage brain hasn't yet accumulated enough experience to understand the risks of their actions and therefore is naive about the consequences. In the decision making faculties of the brain specifically related to survival, we magnify negative experiences so that we avoid them in the future. The decision tree evolves over time or at least should. Those that don't inevitably have a much higher chance of winning a Darwin award.
We'll make great pets
So now we know why some people enjoy school and learn quickly. Perhaps the next step would be to figure out if this mechanism is involved in why others don't get enjoyment out of learning.
The experiment, as reported here, doesn't prove anything.
They admit the striatum was equally active in teenagers and adults, so one would rather conclude that it has no role in learning. The only thing that this experiment proves is that a more active hippocampus corresponds to better memory - as everybody knew already. The connection between risk seeking attitude and better learning is postulated, not proved.
The "science" behind fMRI has been debunked even though "researchers" still cling to it. Why do people keep pushing these dubious studies? Of course the study isn't wrong: the conclusion MAY BE right, or it MAY BE wrong. What a waste.
So basically, they have to learn the hard way...
Could never ever have guessed that on our own... Go science ;)
"Let them do as much as you can stand". So far so good, twenty odd years into it.
Maybe, just maybe, taking bigger risks than the other guys and still getting away with it is seen as an attractive trait when females look for a mate.
There you go, natural selection for risk-taking in the teenage years.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
This is just the continuation of youth worship.
You see the adults have figured out that they can make money off of the thoughtless consumer behavior of "risk takers".
It's not news. Just look at the marketing tactics of basically every teen focused consumer brand - Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Nike, Apple
George Carlin had it right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6wOt2iXdc4
Finally someone with enough GUTS to speak the truth about the fMRI scam! When Trump is president, he will make fMRIs illegal. And he will ban all vaccinations, because he is one of the few who have the GUTS to acknowledge they have been shown to cause autism!
TRUMP 2016!
We let 18 year old take big risks on student loans and when they mess up they are the ones stuck with the 40K+ bill.
Don't matter if be junk science so long as it be published.
Lather. Rinse. REPEAT!
I rest my face!
These people have the most shoddy experiments and the grandest claims. And they have a flawed, nonscientific base-assumption, namely that physicalism is correct. There is no indication for that and quite a few to the contrary, but the scientific facts at this time are that we simply do not know. Building a scientific discipline on such a flawed basis makes it pseudo-science at best and a bizarre form of religion at worst.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The hardest thing you ever learned to do is to walk and to talk. You tried and failed a hundred times, but that did not stop you from thinking that one more attempt and you could succeed. You certainly did not wait around for anyone to tell you how.
Most adults have responsibilities for things like a family, a mortgage, and a full-time job. Hence, their brains adapt to each adult's chosen setting and responsibility-load. Teenagers don't.
The article mentions nothing of controlling for external factors such as this.
Adults who are free of burdensome monthly worries are the best creatives. And the best scientists. And so on.
Last, the study simply showed a correlation when they compared apples to oranges. Correlation =/= Causation.
It's a dangerous world and a teenager needs to recognize and overcome or avoid dangers in order to survive. This is why teens disobey the safety rules set by their parents and why the current policies of imprisoning teens in a safety bubble is wrong. But releasing them creates a problem, how can they learn what's safe and what isn't, without suffering death or disability from their mistake? The education system which is geared towards conformity and forming wage slaves, avoids this issue, even to the point there is little/no sex education or drug education. (An exception is those schools with driver education.) It is mostly upto the parents to provide this learning experience, who are impeded by the inability to 'helicopter' during hands-on experiences. Unlike driving activities, a parent can't guide a teen through sexual activities or drug-use activities. Parents pretend they can force their teen to avoid these entirely even though both are normal adult activities. (The US prohibition didn't fail because criminals liked making alcohol.) Society needs to change so that teens can safely learn these activities. It has occurred to a small extent as schoolgirls no longer have to hide their sexual needs but society needs to create the tools that give growing teens a safe experience.