Brain Development

Throughout adolescence, the human brain undergoes changes that relate to a person's ability to make sound decisions and better control a person's immediate reactions (1.3).  For this reason, accidents are actually the leading causes of death in adolescents.  During adolescence, the prefrontal cortex has not yet fully developed.  The prefrontal cortex is responsible for self-regulation, decision making, and self control (Gogtay & Thompson, 2010).  All of these relate to an individual's ability, or lack there of, to reason out a course of action versus making a rash decision in the moment.  Since it is not fully developed, adolescents are unable to reason as well as an adult can reason.  While the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, the amygdala is.  The amygdala controls the emotions of an individual (Casey, Duhoux, & Malter Cohen, 2010; Casey, Jones, & Somerville, 2011).  Because the emotional control of an adolescent is developed, adolescents have the ability to feel emotions as strongly as a full grown adult is able to; however, because of emotion's close relation reason, the effects of a fully developed amygdala differ from those of an adult.  During the adolescent years, the corpus callosum also thickens.  The corpus callosum connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain and through its thickening, it improves one's ability to process information (Giedd, 2008).  This means that an adolescent's ability to process information is less than that of an adult.  This means that students will feel emotions as strong as an adult, yet lack the ability to properly act upon them as an adult would.

While it is important to understand the differences between my own and my students' brains, there is no specific assignment that can be designed to incorporate brain development.