Prof. Candice Odgers and Prof. Jacqueline Nesi, two of the authors of the recent National Scientific Council on Adolescence report on youth and digital technology, write about how the online world could support healthy development for early adolescents.
This fact sheet gives an overview of adolescent brain development and explains how access to resources, opportunities, and meaningful relationships during adolescence can build connections within our brains and with the world around us that support us into adulthood.
Brain development during adolescence is fundamentally a story of connections.
Around age 9 or 10, hormonal changes kick off a period of intense learning and development, when brain cells form, strengthen, and streamline connections in response to our experiences more rapidly than in any period of life after early childhood.
Activity increases especially in the brain networks that propel us to explore the world, learn from our mistakes, and connect with others in new ways. In turn, these new experiences prompt our brain cells to connect with other neurons in ways that help us adapt to new events and new information. These neural connections become stronger the more we use them, while unused connections are pruned away, helping the brain become more efficient at acquiring and mastering new skills and new ways of thinking.
This brain-building learning happens through direct experiences in our environments and interactive, responsive relationships—with our families and peers, in our classrooms and neighborhoods, in community activities, and even online. The resources, opportunities, and experiences we as adults provide in and out of school can help young people’s brains build the extensive networks of connections that will manage the complex knowledge and behaviors needed to navigate adulthood.
One of the networks that changes significantly with the increase in hormones and dopamine at the beginning of puberty is the “reward system” in our brain. Heightened activity in this system increases the feeling of reward we get from exploring the world, taking risks, and learning from the results.
Meanwhile, the network of brain regions that make up the “social brain” also changes during adolescence. These changes help us tune into social and emotional cues, like facial expressions or social rejection and approval, and increase our desire to earn respect and contribute to others. It also enables us to learn the nuances of changing social contexts in ways that help prepare us for adult relationships.
The prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain that orchestrates critical thinking and behavioral control) undergoes its most rapid period of development during adolescence. It builds on many other systems within the brain to manage our responses to the flood of new information and intensifying emotions. Engaging with other people and our environment and learning from our successes and our mistakes, known as “action-based learning,” helps shape the prefrontal cortex by strengthening the connections within it and between it and other brain networks. We learn through repeated practice—which includes trying and sometimes failing—what is adaptive and appropriate in different situations and how to guide our behavior accordingly, in ways that equip us to pursue new forward-looking goals.
When adults provide youth with opportunities to try new things, to practice navigating emotions, and to learn from failures along the way, it helps build the brain connections that we all need to grow into healthy, thriving adults.
Although we can continue to learn new skills and behaviors as adults, the adaptability of the brain during adolescence means that these connections are much more likely to form quickly in response to experiences. The extent of these changes make the adolescent years a critical window when investments in the right policies and programs for youth can shape long-term positive development.
Likewise, this makes the adolescent years a time when negative experiences including racism, other forms of discrimination, poverty, or abuse can create steeper hills for young people to climb toward a healthy adulthood. When adults ensure that all young people, especially those who have experienced earlier adversity, have what they need along their journey, they can build the skills and capacities they need to thrive as adults. This includes opportunities to explore and take healthy risks, to connect with and contribute to those around us, to make decisions and learn from the outcomes, to develop a healthy sense of identity, and to rely on support from parents or other caring adults.
Understanding how and why the brain develops during adolescence lets us provide the support young people need to build healthy connections—in their world and within their brains—that will help our youth and our communities thrive.
Research Roundup | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This roundup provides an overview of recent research about adolescent development that examined the importance of parents’ ethnic-racial identity, the benefits of a mindfulness intervention, the link between agency and sense of purpose, the association between brain development and resilience to stress, and the link between heart rate variability and mental health.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research about adolescent development that examined the importance of parents’ ethnic-racial identity, the benefits of a mindfulness intervention, the link between agency and sense of purpose, the association between brain development and resilience to stress, and the link between heart rate variability and mental health.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDA@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
(Nature Communications, July 2024)
In this study, Meike Hettwer and colleagues examined whether resilience to adversity during adolescence relates to ongoing development of brain regions that support emotion regulation and cognitive control. In a longitudinal study of 141 adolescents ranging from 14 to 26 years old, the researchers measured mental health and environmental stressors (including dysfunctional family environments, significant adverse life events, and low socioeconomic status) at two timepoints, one to two years apart. The researchers quantified the extent to which each adolescent was susceptible or resilient to stress — that is, whether the youth demonstrated worse-than-expected or better-than-expected mental health given their stressful life experiences. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at each timepoint, they examined whether resilience to adversity related to myelination, the process by which a protective, insulating layer called myelin develops around neurons, allowing for efficient communication throughout networks in the brain.
The researchers found that adolescents who demonstrated increasing resilience to stress over time also exhibited greater myelination within the anterolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that supports emotion regulation and cognitive control. Together, these findings suggest that efficient maturation of prefrontal networks helps adolescents effectively regulate their emotions and flexibly adapt to environmental stressors.
Why this matters: These findings suggest that myelination, a critical part of adolescent brain development, may promote resilience in the face of adversity during adolescence by enabling efficient functioning of still-developing emotion regulation networks. Interventions that help build resilience during adolescence, like strong social support, could contribute to these critical connections in the developing adolescent brain.
(American Psychologist, November 2024)
In this study, Juan del Toro and colleagues explored whether parents reduce the risk of early pubertal development in young adolescents who experience ethnic-racial discrimination. Using data from the ABCD study, the researchers analyzed survey data from 1,651 adolescent siblings (average age = 11.49 years) and their parents. Based on prior work demonstrating that chronic stress, including ethnic–racial discrimination, can accelerate biological aging, they tested whether adolescents who reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination also exhibited advanced pubertal development for their age. They found that adolescents who self-reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination than their siblings showed more advanced pubertal development. However, they also found that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities might play a protective role: The relationship between discrimination and pubertal maturation was weakened in households with parents who reported a greater sense of belonging and commitment to their ethnic-racial group. This suggests that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities can help confer resilience to the negative consequences of discrimination in adolescents.
Why this is important: This study showcases the powerful role that parents can play in promoting resilience in adolescents experiencing ethnic-racial discrimination.
(Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2024)
Research has shown that higher heart rate variability is associated with an increased ability to respond adaptively to stress and effectively regulate emotions. To test this idea, Gillian Debra and colleagues examined whether the association between rumination (repetitive thinking about one’s problems) and negative emotions was reduced in adolescents with higher resting heart rate variability. In a sample of 235 adolescents (average age = 13.48 years), researchers measured adolescents’ heart rate variability while they watched a five-minute video depicting natural landscapes. Then, over fourteen days, participants received five smartphone surveys each day. In each survey, they rated their current negative emotions (sad, angry, anxious, uncertain, and stressed) and indicated how much they had been ruminating about their negative emotions. The researchers found that adolescents with higher heart rate variability showed less of a link between rumination and negative emotions.
Why this is important: This research demonstrates that higher heart rate variability may benefit adolescent mental health in everyday life and suggests that interventions focused on increasing heart rate variability could promote adolescent wellbeing.
(Frontiers in Psychology, August 2024)
In this study, Olga Tymofiyeva, Benjamin Sipes, and colleagues tested the efficacy of a mindfulness intervention in 14-to 18-year-old adolescents. A group of 100 adolescents were randomly assigned to an intervention group or waitlist-control group. Adolescents assigned to the Training for Awareness, Resilience, and Action (TARA) intervention completed a 12-week training program of remote, weekly sessions and at-home practice. During the training, participants learned about topics including stress responses and strategies to regulate emotions and practiced mindfulness techniques including breathing exercises, yoga sequences, and meditation. The researchers assessed brain connectivity, sleep, and emotional well-being before and after the program. Adolescents who completed the TARA intervention, but not those in the control group, reported significantly improved sleep following the program. The researchers also found that the intervention led to increased connectivity within brain networks that support interoception, or awareness of internal bodily sensations, which has been linked to positive mental health.
Why this is important: This research provides evidence that a remote mindfulness intervention may benefit adolescent wellbeing by improving sleep and modifying “interoceptive networks,” the brain circuitry that enables adolescents to tune in to the physical sensations within their own bodies and is related to emotional well-being.
(Child Development, November 2024)
In this study, Kaylin Ratner and colleagues assessed whether adolescents who participated in a self-driven learning program experienced increases in their daily sense of purpose. During the program, 321 under-resourced adolescents between 14- and 19-year-olds explored a self-identified passion (e.g., software development, animal therapy, criminal justice) for about 10 weeks. Participants were provided with a stipend and were matched with a supportive adult to check in with during the program. For each day of the program, adolescents reported their daily sense of purpose (“How purposeful do you feel today?”), and researchers analyzed how each adolescent’s answer to this question changed over the course of the program. On average, adolescents in the program reported high and relatively stable senses of purpose over time. Adolescents who reported a greater sense of agency — measured by their self-reported motivation and ability to pursue and achieve personal goals — at baseline were more likely to experience increases in their sense of purpose. The authors suggest that interventions that increase one’s sense of agency could help adolescents benefit more from out-of-school opportunities.
Why this is important: These results suggest that increasing young people’s sense of agency during adolescence could provide youth with a greater sense of purpose and make out-of-school learning opportunities even more rewarding.
Science Spotlight | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight summarizes the impacts of early adversity on development and the interventions during adolescence that can help youth thrive.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. Throughout our lives, our brain changes and adapts to new experiences, but there are periods of development when our brain is especially responsive to input from our experiences and our environment. Adolescence—from about age 10 to age 25—is one of these windows.
During our adolescent years, connections between regions in our brains are strengthened and streamlined in response to our experiences, becoming more efficient and effective to support the skills we need for adulthood. Research has shown that crucial brain systems such as the prefrontal cortex develop rapidly during adolescence, and effects of environmental factors on this development are amplified. This makes adolescence a critical period for cognitive and social development. It also makes the adolescent years an important period of opportunity when research-informed interventions can address the impact of earlier adversity.
When we experience adversity—such as toxic stress, trauma, and neglect—early in life, the ways our brain and body adapt to these traumas can create steeper hills for us to climb toward positive behavioral development and healthy functioning in adolescence and adulthood.
Following are research-based insights about the impact of early adversity on adolescent development.
When we experience stress, our brain and body respond to prepare us to handle the stressor and its consequences. For example, if we lived in an unsafe environment as a child in which we were often exposed to significant threats, we might have a heightened attention and vigilance about potential threats, which could accelerate the maturing of neural emotion circuits in our brain. This vigilance could serve an adaptive purpose, by helping us protect ourselves and avoid danger. However, once we were no longer exposed to the stressful environment, these once adaptive changes could negatively impact our social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Support through positive relationships and research-informed interventions can help us learn behaviors that would better serve our health and wellbeing.
As adults who want to support young people, we need to understand how early adversity affects development and apply evidence-based interventions and developmentally appropriate support to address these negative impacts and help these young people thrive.
These impacts on development can create steeper paths for youth who have faced earlier adversity. Adolescence offers a window when targeted support from adults could help these youth to navigate their way to a thriving adulthood.
The adaptability of our brain to our experiences and relationships during adolescence make these years a time when targeted interventions may have significant impacts on brain and behavioral development, leading to long-term positive effects on development and life outcomes.
The effectiveness of an intervention can vary based on individual differences in trauma response, the nature of the adversity, and the quality of support and resources available to an individual. There are many forms of early adversity, so it is important to focus closely on the nature of the adversity a young person has experienced as well as the unique needs of a specific youth to design the most effective and targeted intervention strategy.
Successful interventions also require adequate resources and support to ensure that youth can access these resources. Programs that increase access to resources and build supportive environments for young people who have experienced adversity are crucial for reducing inequalities and supporting healthy brain and behavioral development for all young people. For example, state-level programs such as cash benefits for low-income families have been shown to mitigate the negative effects of low income on brain development and mental health.
Following are examples of interventions that may be effective for adolescents who experienced early life adversity.
➢ Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic approach that focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. CBT can help youth who were exposed to trauma regulate their emotions and respond to stress. Trauma-focused CBT that is specifically tailored to address negative responses to childhood trauma and adversity have been shown to be especially effective for treating PTSD in youth who have experienced adversity.
➢ Mindfulness and meditation can be effective in adolescents who have experienced various forms of early adversity and have been shown to support cognitive abilities, mental and physical health, and academic performance. Meditation treatment can help improve attention and academic performance by strengthened communication between frontal brain systems in adolescents who experienced early childhood neglect. Such findings suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may impact adolescents’ regulatory neural systems.
➢ Reward-based therapies can be effective, because adolescents tend to show heightened sensitivity to rewards (including social, monetary, or even sweet-tasting rewards) that provide incentives for engaging in positive behaviors. Research shows that rewards—which can range from delicious food to fun or relaxing activities with friends—may help encourage adolescents to participate in treatment and seek out enjoyable and rewarding activities. Therapies focused on positive reinforcement may be especially effective for improving mood and reducing stress reactivity in vulnerable individuals.
➢ Safety signal learning helps adolescents learn to identify cues that a situation is safe and reduce the perception of threat, which counteracts the hyperarousal and hypervigilance that can develop following trauma exposure. Identifying safety signals can help youth regulate their emotions and decrease their physical and cognitive reactivity to stress when faced with stressors or trauma-related triggers. Safety signal learning may be effective even if other approaches, such as standard exposure therapy, are unsuccessful.
➢ Positive relationships with supportive adults and peers during adolescence are critical for promoting healthy emotional development after a young person has faced earlier adversity. These kinds of developmental relationships can occur through connections with peers, parents, or other caring adults such as teachers or coaches, and can nourish young people and support their healthy development and growth, like a root system supporting a tree.
Research suggests that adolescents who live in high-quality caregiving environments in which their emotional and physical needs are met experience lower levels of anxiety and depression and are better able to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions—even if they were originally raised in caregiving environments that did not meet their emotional or physical needs, such as institutions. Given the benefits of high-quality caregiving for adolescent resilience, therapies focusing on improving caregiver-adolescent relationships can be useful for promoting positive mental health outcomes in adolescence.
Peer relationships and friendships also play an important role in helping young people process and regulate their emotions. Group therapy sessions and peer support groups can be especially effective and help adolescents connect with other young people with similar lived experiences. Connecting with peers also helps foster a sense of belonging by providing social support and strengthening social networks.
➢ Psychoeducation can help adolescents feel a sense of agency over their situation by providing information about how their experiences may have impacted their brain and behavior. Learning about the effects of early experiences can help empower youth to understand more about themselves and seek appropriate support. Combining psychoeducation with interventions that promote self-awareness, self-esteem, and a positive self-concept can counteract effects of early adversity and promote a positive sense of identity. Interventions that target growth mindset—or the belief that personal characteristics are changeable—may be especially impactful for successfully improving academic performance and mental health.
Similarly, recognizing and uplifting an adolescent’s cultural background can help build a positive
➢ Academic support such as tutoring and educational programs can help young people exposed to adversity catch up academically and develop a sense of self-efficacy if they have experienced negative impacts on academic and cognitive functioning.
➢ Extracurricular activities, hobbies, and/or volunteering are also promising avenues for helping adolescents develop a
