Brain Development Science Sheds Light on Teen Driving

By Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D.

In 2010, I chaired the National Academies Committee on the Science of Adolescence, and the main focus of our work was on adolescent risk taking. Not surprisingly, we spent a good deal of time talking about reckless driving, and how to prevent it.

Before the development of brain-imaging technology, scientists could only speculate about the workings of the adolescent brain. Now, however, using the same scanners that identify torn ligaments and tumors, researchers are able to see inside adolescents’ brains and watch what happens when they think. We now know that, other than the first three years of life, no period of development is characterized by more-dramatic brain changes than adolescence. The specific nature of these changes helps explain why adolescents may be especially inclined toward risky behavior.

A chemical in the brain called dopamine is responsible for the feeling of pleasure. When something enjoyable happens, we experience what some scientists have called a “dopamine squirt,” which leads to the sensation of pleasure. It makes us want whatever elicited the squirt, because the feeling of pleasure it produces is so strong.

We now know there is a rapid increase in dopamine activity in early adolescence — in fact, there is more dopamine activity in the brain’s reward center in early adolescence than at any other time of life. Because things feel especially pleasurable during early adolescence, young adolescents go out of their way to seek rewarding experiences. At all ages we seek out things that make us feel good, of course. But the push to do this is much more intense in early adolescence than before or after.

The urge to seek out rewarding and pleasurable experiences is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it’s part of what makes it so much fun to be a teenager. But sometimes this drive is so intense adolescents can exhibit a sort of reward “tunnel vision.” They are so driven to seek pleasure they may not pay attention to the associated risks. To a teenager, the anticipation of driving fast can feel so good thoughts about a speeding ticket (or worse) don’t even make it onto the radar.

http://www.autoobserver.com/2011/02/brain-development-science-sheds-light-on-teen-driving.html