![]() ![]() While the adolescent brain is adding and strengthening some connections, it is also trimming others, and estrogen and testosterone are believed to play a role in this process, called synaptic pruning. “It’s what gives us the ability to integrate and process information from multiple sources: our emotions, memories, and surrounding environment,” he says. The hormone-driven increase in white matter is particularly important in helping the brain mature because it dramatically improves the flow of information between various parts of the brain, says Jay Giedd, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, who uses brain imaging to study adolescent brain development. ![]() Scientists also have recently learned that myelination can alter the timing and coordination of signaling in the brain, which may allow the brain to engage in more complex mental processes. This white matter growth, called myelination, is critical to the cognitive advances of adolescence as it gives axons the ability to transmit information about 100 times faster than unmyelinated axons. Glia make myelin, which grows and wraps around axons to protect them and speed up neural transmission. White matter consists of support cells ( glia) and axons coated in a fatty material called myelin. Scientists have long understood that these hormones can affect the nervous system. For example, testosterone can play a prominent role in stimulating sex drive, and there is evidence that estrogen levels can influence some types of learning and memory.Īlso, recent studies in both animals and humans show that during adolescence, estrogen and testosterone help stimulate and shape the production of white matter. Often grouped together as “sex steroids” or “gonadal hormones” because they are manufactured in the gonads - the ovaries in girls and the testes in boys - these hormones are present before birth, but their levels spike during puberty. The main hormones in question are estrogen and testosterone. During this time, the adolescent brain is changing in important ways, and scientists are now beginning to understand how hormones also play a role in some of these changes A Brain on Steroids The hallmark changes of puberty - like the development of facial hair in boys and the start of menstruation in girls - are brought about by a flood of hormones. Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. This image shows how this area develops during this time, with the blue color indicating areas that are more mature. The brain goes through many changes during adolescence, including the maturation of the cerebral cortex - the outer layer of the brain that is important for reasoning and abstract thinking. ![]()
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