Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

This is a good science book with a poor title. I guess it sells more copies but also sets up expectations that are not fully met. IMHO a more accurate title would be The Life of the Brain.

You probably won't find any secrets here, nor learn surprising insights that will change your perspective on adolescents. The main message of this book is: our brain develops over time, it takes up to 40 years to reach its "adult" state, so the brains of kids, teenagers, and adults significantly differ from each other. While we (mostly) understand that kids behave like kids, there might be an expectation that teenagers "grow up" and act like adults - responsibly, maturely, and logically. This book presents extensive proof that brains going through puberty are simply not designed for such things.

Still, the book is an excellent introduction to neuroscience. It explains how the brain works, how it changes, and how it may impact our behavior. It's written in an approachable and conversational manner. It presents extensive research with data, references, and... nuance! It doesn't jump to sensational conclusions but rather shows why causation is not correlation and that there are multiple factors that we can't fully control.

What I missed here was a strong narrative. Except for a few introductory chapters, one could shuffle the rest and the book would still have perfect sense. Every chapter shows that the brain changes over time and adolescence can be a tricky period, only the context changes (e.g. risk-taking, self-control, peer pressure, mental health disorders). The author focuses only on changes in the brain structure and relies mostly on fMRI studies. This is a very narrow perspective, she acknowledges there are more seismic shifts during puberty but does not dare to venture into different territories where she's not an expert.

Overall, it's a good and easy read. I'd recommend it as the first book to read about the internal workings of the brain. But for those who already have some background, I'd rather go with Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst which I find much more comprehensive and engaging, but at the same time more demanding.… (altro)

The very nerve centre of the human body is the brain. Its input is our senses, the memory helps us to learn from mistakes and controls the reactions that are needed. For hundreds of years, the brain has been a mystery to all that studied it, but only in the past few decades have we begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities. Even that is unravelling; those that thought as puberty begun, the human brain was developed have been proved wrong. The brain continues to change and adapt all through the teenage years and into adulthood.

In this excellent book on why the teenage brain is different, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor in cognitive neuroscience at University College London takes us into the untidy spaces within their heads to share the latest details of what is going on. From her experiments that her team have in researching the brain we will learn about why they take risks, why some friendships can be so intense, why some behave badly and others won't talk. This time of our lives is when we can enormously creative and also destructive, a lot of mental health issues raise their head for the first time ever in teenagers.

As the father of two teenage daughters and one almost teenage son, there are a lot of things that I can relate to that she talks about in here. The brain is at a critical point in its development in teenage years and is susceptible to all sort of external stresses. Some of these can be positive, but there are a lot that have negative implications. Like all good science books it makes you think and even though this is about our most complex organ, the prose sparkles with energy and is written with clarity. Well worth reading and a worthy winner of the Royal Science Award.… (altro)