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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For years, researchers have suggested teens who exhibit risky and destructive behaviors may be influenced by underdeveloped brains. New research suggests just the opposite.
A new study suggests teenagers who engage in risky behaviors develop more mature white matter tracts in the brain at a younger age. Normally, by a person's mid-twenties, white matter becomes dense and organized, signaling full maturity of the brain.
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In the study, conducted at Emory University and the Emory School of Medicine, researchers used a new form of brain imaging similar to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure structural changes among the white matter in the brain as it matured.
We were surprised to discover that risk-taking was associated with more highly developed white matter -- a more mature brain," Gregory Berns, M.D, Ph.D., principal investigator and professor of Psychiatry and Neuroeconomics at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., was quoted as saying. We were also surprised to learn that except for slightly higher scores in risk-taking, there was no significant difference in the maturity of the white matter between males and females."
The study included 91 young adults, ages 12 through 18, whom researchers followed for three years. The risk-taking behaviors were measured by survey and then Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was used to compare structural changes in the white matter tracts.
In the past, most studies of brain imaging were focused on gray matter, which is made up of actual neurons. DTI enabled researchers to look at white matter more closely, which is responsible for linking all of the neurons together in the brain.
SOURCE: PLoS ONE, August 26, 2009
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