Adolescence is a time of major change in our lives. As Simone de Beauvoir writes in her book America day by day, “L‘adolescence is the passage between the given world of childhood and the existence of a man to found ”. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge and the College of London (United Kingdom) have precisely observed how the brain evolves when we cross this bridge between adolescence and adulthood. Their results have been published on their respective websites.
They first studied the brain activity of 298 healthy young people, ages 14 to 25, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an advanced technology. The sessions were held one to three times at approximately 6 and 12 months apart. Each time, the participants quietly lay down, letting the researchers analyze the connection diagram of the different regions of their brain while it was at rest.
This brain “mic mac” which makes us become adults
The team discovered over time that the functional connectivity of the brain (the way in which different regions of the brain communicate with each other) changes in two ways with age. Initially, the brain areas governing vision, movement and other basic faculties are strongly interconnected at the age of 14 and are more strongly at the age of 25. Which, in fact, turns out to be quite positive.
In a second step, the researchers observed that the connection between the brain regions which make it possible to imagine how another person thinks or what he feels, evolve differently: the weak connections at the time of adolescence would be reinforced with the age, and conversely, those who were strong would weaken.
Don’t panic, let’s explain: the researchers observed high levels of metabolic activity, generally associated with a re-modeling of the connections between nerve cells. It is therefore at the whim of this “mic mac” that new networks are formed in our brain, allowing us to acquire and strengthen our social skills to become adults.
Better understanding mental disorders in young people
In addition to the fact that these observations provide us with a better understanding of brain evolution, they could also allow researchers to better understand the formation of mental illnesses.
“We know that depression, anxiety and other mental disorders often occur for the first time in adolescence, but we don’t know how,” said Professor Ed Bullmore, head of the department of psychiatry at Cambridge and co -author of the study. These results therefore show us that re-modeling of brain networks is done during adolescence, but can also provide us with a deeper understanding of the causes of mental illness in young people. ”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “lhe mental health problems account for 16% of the global burden of disease and injury among young people aged 10-19. ” Half of these mental disorders appear before the age of 14, but are often neither detected nor treated. Globally, depression is one of the leading causes of adolescent morbidity and disability, and suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-19 year olds.
“When left untreated, adolescent mental health issues have physical and mental consequences into adulthood, limiting their chances of leading fulfilling lives.” Let us therefore hope that this study is, as its authors hope, the outline of future further work on mental disorders in young people.
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