Teenger psicology

Through the ages, rlost answers have cited dark forces that uniquely affect the teen. Ariitotle concluded more than 2,300 years ago that "the young are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine." Ashepherd in William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale wisires "there were no age between ten and three-and-twent¡ dr that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but gettingwenches with child, wronging the ancientr¡ stealing, fighting." His lament colors r¡ost modern scientific inquiries as well, G, Stanley Hall, who formalized adolescent studies with his 1904
Adolescence:Its Psychology and Its Relatíons to

most head growth afterward. But as we move through adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive remodeling, resembling a network and

wiring upgrade.
Forstarters, the brain's axons-the long nerve fibers that neurons use to send signals to other neurons-become grádually more insulated with a fatty substance called myelin (the brain's white matter),eventually boosting the axons' transmission speed up to a hundred times. Meanwhile, dendrites, the branchlike extensions üat
neurons use to receive signals from nearby a:cons, grow twiggier, and the mostheavily used synapses-the little chemical junctures acros which axons and dendrites pass notes-grow richer and stronger. At the same time, synapses that see little use begin to wither. This synapticpruning, as it is called, causes the brain's cortex-the outer layer of gray matter where we do much of our conscious

Anthr o p olo gy, S o c i ol o gy, S e x, Cr i m e, Religian and Education, believedthis period of "storm and stress" replicated earliet less civilized stages of human development. Freud saw adolescence as an expression oftorturous psyP hy siol o gy,

I an opPortunity to
ould youcall it?" calnrly, l"Reck'said laylng attention. But oint of doing this on )rstate, in broad daynd no trafic. I mean, Jng. I was driving.

chosexual conflict; Erik Erikson, as thé most tumultnous...