Customer Reviews
Good Read for Parents, Not Neurologists 
2006-02-23
This was a good read for parents of teens or pre-adolescents who are not in the medical field or some related field. The author is not a researcher but a journalist putting together what they've learned about the topic. (Some parents may have already done this for themselves.) It's not as detailed as someone well-read on the topic may hope, but for someone just becoming interested, perhaps someone experiencing shocking episodes in their own home with their own primal teen, it's a good starter book! Glad she put it together. Hopefully there's more to come with more neurological detail.
So That's What's Going On in Their Heads! 
2005-05-13
This book has helped me understand so much about what is going on with my teen! I could not put this book down. Now when my son does something odd, I just think, well at least I know why. Of course their is still your active parenting involved, but you know how to approach things better, and with an understanding of what may, or may not, have been going on in their little teenage brains. Buy it.
A must read for teen advisors and parents 2005-02-23
I have referred this books to many other parents, our school advisors, and other professionals. Barbara's work is incredible, humorous, timely, and full of rich meaningful content.
I use this book as a mental framework for understanding teens, not that I subscribe to the brain development as the only explanation of teen behavior.
A book to read, re-read, and take to parenting groups.
Vastly sage, articulate, and informative.
Adolescent Angst via MRI 2004-12-19
Why do teen-aqers shoplift, vandalize, argue illogically, indulge in high-risk activities, pierce their bodies, and exude obnoxious behavior (feel free to add items to this list)?
MRI studies of brain component size and activity document that adolescents' brains are unfinished, are chock full of neurological and hormonal changes, and work differently than the brains of adults.
In 1997, neuroscience made a surprising discovery. In early adolescence, the brain's gray matter - its outer layer - thickens, then dramatically thins out. In brain thickening, tiny branches of cells bloom madly, a process called "exuberance." This is followed by "pruning." As adolescence progresses, "there is an enormous loss of gray matter...a wholesale slashing of cell branches & synapses...a massive synaptic re-organization." This is very much like what happens at birth through late childhood, but scientist didn't realize that it happens again in adolescence.
"The frontal lobes, the very area that helps teen-agers make the right decisions, are the very last areas to reach stability...When shown fear producing images, teen-age brains 'lit up' in the amygdala, a key area for instinctual reactions such as fight or flight, anger, or 'I hate you, Mom.' When adults were shown the same stimulus, they 'lit up' in the frontal lobes...What can we expect if that inhibition machinery, the pre-frontal cortex, is not yet fully formed?"
This book tells us to maintain vigilance, appropriate consequences for behavior, and some influence over that all-important peer group. At the same time, take it easy. "The old instinctual knowledge familiar to our grandparents 'They'll grow out of it,' now has a modern scientific foundation."
Good point, fuzzy argument 
2004-09-04
The strength of the book is in its message: teenager's brain undergoes a tremendous change, and realizing this would greatly help parents, teachers and others dealing with teens. The book's weakness is in the details: the science is muddled and the narrative often confused, leaving many of the open questions on the table.
The book's central point is that during teen years kids develop the part of the brain, prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for putting the brake mechanism in their decision making system. Without this part well developed, kids seem to have no way of restraining and analyzing their free-ranging emotions. Hence attitude problems, blow-ups and other unfortunate trademarks of the age.
This process of brain development helps better understand the behavioral peculiarities of teens (aloofness, thrill seeking, even drinking and smoking). The prefrontal cortex, which is under construction throughout the teen years, requires large amounts of dopamine, the neurotransmitter instrumental in our feeling of wellbeing. Because of this, during these years there is much less dopamine in other parts of the brain. So, to feel good teenagers need to bombard their brain with much stronger stimuli. Hence drugs, alcohol etc. Immediately, though, Strauch contradicts herself: she claims that teenagers are awash in dopamine, the "reds are redder" for them, they see the world in much accentuated colors. On top of that, estrogen, the hormone produced in women, and to a lesser extent in men, revs up dopamine as well. The author never comes to a conclusion on whether teenagers have dopamine in excess or lack it. For practical purposes, if much of teenage brain is lacking in dopamine and they are naturally looking for stimuli we should provide them with the ways to take safe risks (if they take a rock climbing class they may not want to drag race that car). If, instead, teenagers were swimming in dopamine, this strategy wouldn't be as insightful.
Smoking girls are found to loose 10% of their memory aptitude. But on the same page (186) nicotine is claimed to improve memory and learning. The score is never tallied: does nicotine enhance or inhibit brain functionality?
The gender differences are jumbled as well. The author reassures that women's brains, although smaller than men's, run "hotter". So the size does matter? No supporting evidence is offered. Estrogen, responsible for increase in dopamine, is much more abundant in woman's brain than in man's. But whether it contributes to age-specific differences between genders during teen years is never explored.
The book mentions, importantly, that good family relationships would outweigh the chemical and neurological imbalance of teenager's brain. This surprising fact should have been given much more attention in the book, since it may reinforce an action plan for a family of a teenager.
A good practical point is "ask for one thing at a time", since teenagers often seem incapable of keeping track of more than one task.
On balance, the heart of the book is in the right place, its mind - not quite. The main message - pay attention to this kid's brain development, you will understand much more of her - is fully deserving. The book's topic is important, and more coherent popular literature on it is needed. I hope that someone would pick up the slack.
Adolescence partially explained 2008-07-06
This book provides a series of relatively recent findings on brain development, during adolescence, and connects those changes with behavior patterns seen in many teenagers. Some of the findings discussed are interesting, but not startling, while others are quite remarkable, and go a long way toward helping us understand our children better. If you think this book sounds too dry for you, it isn't! Please read on.
What led to the new findings? New technology, that is much less invasive, now allows scientists to study the human brain in action, without harm to the subjects. This technology consists mainly of different forms of brain scans. With the ethical dilemma, of balancing harm versus gain, rendered virtually moot, researchers became free to run studies of healthy adolescent volunteers, with informed subject and parental consent, of course. This opened up the possibility of creating an accurate baseline, against which the brain functioning of adolescents, with already-documented neurological and/or psychopathological disorders, could be compared. There had already been ongoing research of the functioning of the human brain, where the subjects had diagnosed pathology, but it had to be done post-mortem, to avoid causing further harm.
One of the key findings discussed in this book, involves the neuroanatomical term exuberance. In this context, exuberance means a sudden, rapid, dramatic growth of brain cells, especially in the pre-frontal cortex, where evidence indicates many key aspects of thinking, like logic, decision-making, and problem-solving are seated. Post-mortem research has long shown an interesting pattern in the growth of the human brain between birth and age ten or so. At birth, the human brain has approximately the same number of cells as an adult brain, but the brain undergoes dramatic growth, over the first two years or so, coinciding with the dramatic rate of learning and exploring the world that occurs during that time, for most children. That dramatic spurt of brain growth is termed exuberance by brain researchers. Then, from ages three through ten or so, the human brain undergoes reorganization and many of the new cells die off, especially those that are not being used. By age ten, the number of brain-cells is back to adult-normal.
Scientists thought that was the end of the story, until the new studies on non-pathological adolescents came out. What they found, using the new, non-invasive scans of healthy adolescents, was that the phenomenon of exuberance occurs all over again, beginning in the early stages of puberty. There is a new wave of dramatic brain growth, starting around ages ten to twelve. This rapid growth of brain cells, is followed by years of reorganization within the brain, with resulting new-found abilities, and significant changes in behavior, thinking, and moods. The growth spurt of the brain again occurs mainly in the pre-frontal cortex. This parallels the time period wherein many teenagers begin displaying whole new abilities to see and understand things, often along with sometimes-dramatic changes in their mood stability and behavior patterns. Remember, the pre-frontal cortex is the home of such brain functions as logic, decision-making, and problem-solving.
The findings related to exuberance are the most startling ones reported in this book, but many other studies are described, including studies on other areas of the brain. For each one, the author does an excellent job of providing both technical and plain-English explanations. The research and the explanations are not the heart of this book, though. What makes it useful and good is Ms. Strauch's blend of anecdotes and non-technical descriptions of how all this new neurological information connects with the behavior patterns found in adolescents. In many ways, this book goes a long way to connect the concept of formal operations, proposed by Jean Piaget in the 1920s, to the organic bases for many of the changes involved in formal operations. Ms. Strauch, who is the medical science and health editor for The New York Times, also deftly blends in how environment and learning influences and interacts with the changes going on in the adolescent brain, thus balancing nature and nurture factors well. It is this humanizing aspect of the writing that helps the reader readily connect science with everyday life.
After the introductory chapters, subsequent chapters cover a wide range of common phenomena in human adolescence, and how they relate to the new scientific information. The topics covered include things like changes in learning ability, understanding and using irony and more sophisticated forms of humor, decreased mood stability, increases in unpredictable behavior, increased risk-taking, increased social behavior, changes in sleep patterns, sexuality and love, the short-term and long-term impact of substance abuse on brain development, and the adolescent onset of some forms of psychopathology.
Overall, this is an excellent book to help parents, teachers, and anyone who interacts with adolescents. I am a clinical psychologist who works with children and teenagers in a mental health clinic, and I believe that the information in The Primal Teen will help me and my colleagues become more effective in our work, by adding a whole new level of understanding of adolescent behavior to what we have learned in our education and our experience. I can also say that this book rings true with many things I have seen over the years.
Why do teens do what they do 2007-12-11
WOW. Did you ever wonder why teens do crazy things? We as adults are many times perplexed as to some of the things our teens do. We think "Don't they know better?" My daughter used to spend time doing homework and then not turn it in the next day. When asked why she did not turn the work in, she would reply "i don't know" I could not fathom this. After reading this book it makes so much more sense. As a counselor at a high school, I am amazed at what teens do. I now have some idea and it makes sense.
I recommend this book to all the parents and staff I work with in understanding the teenager. Well worth the money.
Yet Another Ridiculous Parenting Book 
2006-12-01
The is yet another book premised on the assumption that your teen (or child) is some kind of alien. Remember -- you were once a child and a teen yourself, and your child will eventually be an adult, and maybe even a parent. Just relate to your child as a person, and forget about this book.
A must-read for every parent! 2006-05-04
As parents of teens, we tend to think that--by now--we have pretty much figured out what makes our kids tick...hormones, immaturity, psicological issues...right? Well, maybe that is only part of the picture. This books does a wonderful job of going beyond that, to the neurological foundation of behavior itself. It clearly explains the ramifications of the changes that are going on at a neurological level in the brain of teens and how that, consequently, translates into "teen behavior".
Your kid is not "crazy"...their frontal cortex just needs more time to develop! A reassuring read for every parent!
Not an Instruction Manual 2006-03-16
Strauch's book answers many questions as regards my teens' behaviors. My last one at home is 16; I purchsed this book to help me understand what is happening within that skull of his. Strauch utilizes her research to not only explain what my own child is going through but also helps to clarify the behavior of youth today as far as impulsivity, criminality, and various other compelling and noteworthy up-to-the-minute pertinent and important information we need to help our teenagers be successful in this day and age. The book is written somewhat like an investigative report, with a humourous punch, and is easily read by parents and teachers alike. It is an enjoyable and worthy read.
