Inside a teenager's brain
了解青少年的大脑发育过程和特点
What were you like as a teenager? I was a nightmare. I was rude to my parents, always stayed out late, never did my homework, hung out with the wrong people and made lots of bad decisions. Apparently, this is the age when teenagers are out of control and behave badly. Maybe, if you're a teenager now, you think this is unfair criticism or it's not your fault. Well, you might be right!
你十几岁的时候是什么样子的？我就是个噩梦。我对父母很粗鲁，总是很晚才回家，从不做家庭作业，和不应该的人出去鬼混，而且做了很多糟糕的决定。显然，这个年龄的青少年是叛逆的。也许，你就是一个青少年，你认为这样的批评不公平，或者这不是你的错。好吧，也许你是对的！
Experts have found that it's a teenager's brain that is to blame. Between the ages of approximately 13 to 19 - a period known as adolescence - the brain is still developing in areas that control behaviour. This has an impact on learning and multitasking, stress and memory, sleep, addiction, and decision-making. For parents, these consequences often manifest themselves in a variety of behaviours that they may have previously blamed on hormones or just moodiness.
专家发现，青少年时期的大脑才是罪魁祸首。在大约13岁到19岁之间——也就是我们所知的青春期——大脑仍在控制行为的区域发育。这对学习和多任务处理、压力和记忆、睡眠、成瘾和决策都有影响。在父母眼里，这通常表现为各种各样的行为，他们之前可能把这归咎于激素或情绪低落。
This is quite a new discovery, according to Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who, speaking on the BBC radio programme The Life Scientific, says "when I was at university, the dogma in the text books was that the vast majority of brain development goes on in the first few years of life and nothing much changes after mid-childhood. That dogma is completely false."
这是相当新颖的发现。莎拉-杰恩·贝克摩尔教授在BBC广播节目生命科学栏目中表示：“我上大学时,课本上告诉我们的是绝大多数人的大脑只在头几年发育,童年时期以后就没什么变化了。这是完全错误的。”
So our brains are still developing much later than was originally thought. Is this the perfect excuse for teenagers to lounge around and not get their homework done on time? Of course not! According to Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, it's to do with our prefrontal cortex - that's the part of our brain right at the front, just behind the forehead. She says "it's involved in a whole range of very high-level cognitive tasks such as decision making and planning - we know that this region is undergoing very very large amounts of development during the adolescent years". This is the part of the brain critically involved in planning, and, for a teenager, this hasn't developed yet. So getting organised to do their homework, for example, can come as a bit of a challenge.
所以，我们的大脑发育的时间比我们最初认为的要长得多。这是青少年无所事事，不按时完成作业的完美借口吗？当然不是！据萨拉-杰恩·布莱克莫尔教授说，这与我们的前额皮质有关——前额皮质位于大脑前端的额头部位。她表示：“它的发育涉及一系列非常高水平的认知任务，比如决策和规划——我们知道，这个区域在青少年时期经历着非常非常大的发展。”这是大脑涉及规划的关键部位，而在青少年时期，这一部位尚未完全发育好。所以，打个比方，让孩子们这个时候自觉做作业还是比较困难的。
I wish I'd known about this because instead of telling my teacher I'd left my homework on the bus or that the dog had eaten it. Now I could say, "Sorry sir, my brain isn't developed enough for the cognitive task of planning my homework".
真希望我早就知道这一点，因为那样我就不用和老师说我把作业落在公共汽车上了或者被狗吃了。反之，我可以说，“对不起，老师，我的大脑还没有发育到可以自觉完成作业的程度。。”
词汇表
nightmare
“噩梦”，棘手的人或事
out of control
失控
adolescence
青春期
multitasking
同时做多件事情
hormone
荷尔蒙
moodiness
情绪多变，喜怒无常
dogma
教条
lounge around
悠闲度日
prefrontal cortex
前额皮层
cognitive task
认知任务
adolescent
青春期的，青少年的
critically
极其地