PSY 399 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Prefrontal Cortex, Reproductive Health, Sensation Seeking
30 Apr 2018
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Department
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Class 9: April 30
Global Adolescent
Burden of Disease
● Diseases of poverty
○ Infectious and vaccine preventable diseases
○ Undernutrition
○ HIV
○ Sexual and reproductive health
● Injuries
○ Unintentional injuries
○ Violence
● Non-Communicable diseases
○ Physical disorders
○ Mental disorders
○ Substance Use disorders
Adolescent Brain
Development
● Still plastic and maturing organ until past 20 years old
○ Cortical thickness, white matter development
● Inside the Teenage Brain
○ Prefrontal cortex: planning and reasoning, grows till 25
○ Amygdala: emotional core for impulse, fear, passion, ext
○ Parietal: touch, sight, language, grows till early 20s
○ Ventral Striatum: reward center, not fully developed in
teens, causes teens to do high-risk behaviors
○ Hippocampus: memory and learning, grows in teens
● Teen brain: less powerful, poorer at error-detection, less regulted,
more impulsive, more emotional labile
○ Higher in sensation seeking, needs higher reward salience
to release dopamine
● Suicide rates increase detrimentally from ages 10 to 18,
especially from ages 16 to 18
○ Use more lethal forms, like guns rather than pills
● Period of Onset: impulse control disorders, substance use
disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia
○ Increase across adolescence and continue into adulthood
● Family Conflict and Teenage Depression
○ Much more conflict with parents if child is depressed
Parenting
Challenges
● With puberty, teens demand more autonomic, increased reasoning
capacity raises tensions
● Conflict typically focused on everyday matters
○ Bigger underlying concerns like protecting against
substance use
● Larger gaps between parent and teen views of teen’s readiness for
new responsibility
○ Increased conflict
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Document Summary
Still plastic and maturing organ until past 20 years old. Prefrontal cortex: planning and reasoning, grows till 25. Amygdala: emotional core for impulse, fear, passion, ext. Parietal: touch, sight, language, grows till early 20s. Ventral striatum: reward center, not fully developed in teens, causes teens to do high-risk behaviors. Hippocampus: memory and learning, grows in teens. Teen brain: less powerful, poorer at error-detection, less regulted, more impulsive, more emotional labile. Higher in sensation seeking, needs higher reward salience to release dopamine. Suicide rates increase detrimentally from ages 10 to 18, especially from ages 16 to 18. Use more lethal forms, like guns rather than pills. Period of onset: impulse control disorders, substance use disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia. Increase across adolescence and continue into adulthood. Much more conflict with parents if child is depressed. With puberty, teens demand more autonomic, increased reasoning capacity raises tensions. Bigger underlying concerns like protecting against substance use.
