Why teens are wired for risk

CNN:

It was hot at 3 a.m. in a small town in North Carolina, and there wasn’t a lot for a group of teenagers to do. So, Hillary Tillotson, her brother and three other guys sneaked under a fence to go swimming at a private pool down the street. Only Tillotson and her then-boyfriend kept their clothes on, she said.

Two days later, a cop showed up at Tillotson’s house. Some of the teens’ accomplices had been bragging about their skinny-dipping adventure, and someone turned them in for trespassing. She and her brother had to go to court; their mother paid the fine.

“Sometimes I wonder where their brains are at,” Tillotson’s mother, Lori Lee, said of her children. “They do such impulsive things, and sometimes I just don’t think they’re thinking.”

Neuroscientists confirm that teenagers do have brains, but they’re wired differently from those of adults. Why many teenagers seek thrills, break rules and seem nonchalant about their own safety has been a question brain scientists have worked to answer in the last two decades. Top researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging to see this brain activity.

Read the whole story: CNN