科普文-一文两题-+-翻译与解读.docxVIP

Neuroscientists have explained the risky, aggressive or just plain confusing behavior of teenagers as the product of a brain that is somehow compromised. Groundbreaking research in the past 10 years, however, shows that this view is wrong. The teen brain is not defective（有缺陷的）. It is not a half-baked adult brain, either. It has been forged by evolution lo function differently from that of a child or an adult. Foremost among the teen brain’s features is its ability to change in response to the environment by modifying the communication networks that connect brain regions. It allows teenagers to make enormous in thinking and socialization. But the change also makes them sensitive to dangerous behavior and serious mental disorders. The most recent studies indicate that the riskiest behavior arises from a mismatch between the maturation of networks in the limbic system（边缘系统）, which drives emotions and intensifies at (青春期）, and the maturation of networks in the prefrontal cortex （前额皮质） , which occurs later and promotes sound judgment and the control of impulses. Indeed, we now know that one’s prefrontal cortex continues to change prominently until his 20s. And yet puberty seems to starling earlier, extending the “mismatch years”. The plasticity of networks linking brain regions—and not the growth of those regions, as previously thought—is key to eventually behaving like an adult. Understanding that, and knowing that a widening gap between the development of emotional and judgment networks is happening in young people today, can help parents, teachers, counselors and teenagers themselves. People will better see that behavior such as risk-taking, sensation-seeking, and turning away from parents and toward peers are not signs of cognitive or emotional problems. They are a natural result of brain development, a normal part of adolescents learning how to negotiate a complex world. The same understanding can also help adults decide when to intervene. A 15-year-old girl’s depar