Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain

by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Overview

A tour through the groundbreaking science behind the enigmatic, but crucial, brain developments of adolescence and how those translate into teenage behavior

The brain creates every feeling, emotion, and desire we experience, and stores every one of our memories. And yet, until very recently, scientists believed our brains were fully developed from childhood on. Now, thanks to imaging technology that enables us to look inside the living human brain at all ages, we know that this isn't so. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, one of the world's leading researchers into adolescent neurology, explains precisely what is going on in the complex and fascinating brains of teenagers — namely that the brain goes on developing and changing right through adolescence—with profound implications for the adults these young people will become.

Drawing from cutting-edge research, including her own, Blakemore shows:

• How an adolescent brain differs from those of children and adults
• Why problem-free kids can turn into challenging teens
• What drives the excessive risk-taking and all-consuming relationships common among teenagers
• And why many mental illnesses — depression, addiction, schizophrenia — present during these formative years

Blakemore's discoveries have transformed our understanding of the teenage mind, with consequences for law, education policy and practice, and, most of all, parents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541742741
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	671,783
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She has published over 120 papers in scientific journals, and won multiple major awards for her research, including the Turin Young Mind & Brain Prize 2013, the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award 2013, the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize 2015, the Presidents' Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge from the British Psychological Society in 2018, and the Royal Society Prize for Science Books in 2018. She was named in the Times Young Female Power List 2014, was one of only four scientists on the Sunday Times 100 Makers of the 21st Century 2014, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Table of Contents

1 Adolescence isn't an aberration 1

2 A sense of self 19

3 Fitting in 31

4 Inside the skull 51

5 Inside the living brain 69

6 The ever-plastic brain 79

7 Social mind, social brain 97

8 Understanding other people 119

9 The right sort of risks 133

10 When things go wrong 157

11 Educating the brain 177

12 It's the journey that matters 193

Notes 203

Acknowledgements 225

Illustration sources 229

Index 233