Adolescent Brain Development: A Period of Vulnerabilities and Opportunities. Keynote Address
This article introduces and summarizes the goals of the symposium. It also provides an overview of a conceptual framework for understanding adolescence, which emphasizes how the very nature of this developmental transition requires an interdisciplinary approachone that focuses on brain/behavior/social-context interactions during this important maturational period. More specifically it describes a set of neurobehavioral changes that appear to be linked to pubertal development, which appear to have a significant effect on motivation and emotion, and considers these puberty-specific changes in affect in relation to a much larger set of developmental changes in adolescence. This framework is used to argue for the need for a transdisciplinary dialogue that brings together work in several areas of neuroscience (including animal models) and normal development with clinical and social policy research aimed at early intervention and prevention strategies.
adolescence puberty neuroplasticity high-risk behavior interdiciplinary studies