Teen Aggression May Really Be a State of Mind

Alan Mozes:

For parents of emotionally combative teens, new research offers a powerful biological reason for all the family feuding -- adolescent brain size.

A team of Australian scientists has found that when key regions of the brain known for controlling emotions are bigger, boys and girls tend to be more aggressive and more persistent during their fights with Mom and Dad.

"This is a bit of a unique study," said study author Nicholas Allen, an associate professor with the Orygen Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. "Because we've shown for the first time that in terms of aggression -- not physical, but being argumentative and unfriendly -- some of the differences in the way teen kids interact with parents are biologically based. The adolescent is developing, their brain is developing, and there's a link between the two."

The finding was published in this week's online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 7, 2008 12:00 AM
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