Summary Of The Teenage Brain By Frances E. Jensen

The book I decided to review was “The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents And Young Adults” written by Frances E. Jensen, MD, with Amy Ellis Nutt. Throughout the book, Jensen examines adolescent brain functioning and development in the context of learning and multitasking, stress and memory, sleep, addiction, and decision making. Likewise, she explains how new research findings not only dismiss commonly held myths about teenagers but also yield practical suggestions for adults and teenagers navigating the difficult and confusing world of adolescent biology. Jensen is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she lectures widely about the teen brain at science museums, TEDMED, and high schools. Amy Nutt is a science journalist at the Washington Post and the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. For the first few chapters of the book, Jenson explains the structure, development, and connectivity of the teenage brain. The connectivity of the brain slowly moves from the back of the brain to the front. The very last places to “connect” are the frontal lobes. In fact, the teen brain is only about 80 percent of the way to maturity. That 20 percent gap, where the wiring is thinnest, is crucial and goes a long way
For instance, in the course book “Human Development: A Life-Span View” defines depression as a disorder characterized by pervasive feelings of sadness, irritability, and low self-esteem (Kail & Cavanaugh, (2014), p. 321). In “The Teenage brain” book, Jensen describes depression by how it is manifested differently in adults then in teenagers and its high prevalence in adolescence. Adolescent depression is more likely to be chronic and is associated with a thirtyfold increase in the risk of suicide (Jensen & Nutt, (2015), p.