Written by Ann Getz, WIC HiSET (GED) Educational Director
1. Brain Parts
Many people think that the brain is fully developed by the time you get to high school. By 16 years old, most of us have stopped growing, so doesn’t that mean all of our body parts also have stopped growing?
Well, not the brain! It starts growing well before you are born. As a matter of fact, the first part of your brain – the brain stem – starts to develop very soon after conception. That part of the brain controls your vital functions that operate without your conscious knowledge. This includes breathing, heartbeat, body temperature, etc.
There are three other parts to the brain:
- cerebellum (controls balance)
- cerebrum (controls critical thinking)
- limbic (controls emotions)
2. Brain Development
Did you know that a baby is born with about 100 billion neurons?
- A neuron is a nerve cell that processes information. Neurons are connected by synapses.
- By early childhood, your brain is 95% of its adult weight. It is working hard to develop your ability to move, see and hear, and reason.
- From age 12-25, your brain is learning to work faster and stabilize all the connections. The biggest changes are in the frontal lobe. That part is concerned with judgement, planning, assessing risks, and decision making. This is a critical time in development and it will have a huge effect on how your brain acts when you are an adult.
We often see teenagers taking risks and following impulses more than adults do. This is because that part of the brain that oversees these decision making capabilities are not fully developed. Synapses are still forming.
After age 30 or so, the brain continues to change and remodel, but on a much slower scale. The brain also starts to slow down and lose capacity as we get older.
3. Brain and Drugs
- Drugs alter the way that nerves send, receive, and process information. Drugs such as THC (the chemical in pot) may even interfere with the development of the nerve cells (neurons) themselves.
- Drugs like amphetamines or cocaine interfere with the development of the synapses. Remember, those are the connections between the neurons. By messing with the connections, the drugs make your body release wrong amounts of brain chemicals. This means your body is getting wrong messages.
So, the drugs cause wrong messages to be sent to your body. When you don’t have those drugs in your system, your brain sends different messages – ones that may make you feel depressed and not as ‘high’ as the drugged messages. To get that feeling back, you may want to use drugs again – and possibly more of them. This will lead to a cycle of drug use and addiction.
When brains are growing, altering the way they function can permanently effect the way you think, feel, and remember information. Using drugs during adolescence and early adulthood (ages 12-25) is most dangerous for the development of your frontal lobe. Remember – that is where your judgement, planning ability, and decision-making skills come from.
Visit us on Facebook!