Human Brain Still Evolving Up to Age 20 Years

For a long time scientists believed the human brain stopped developing in adolescence. But now there is evidence that it is not what actually happened. The human brain has not stopped developing in adolescence, but continues to grow well until the age of 20 years.

Is a researcher named Christian Beaulieu of Alberta Innovates, Health Solutions in the Department of Biomedical Engineering Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Alberta, assisted by Catherine Lebel students who denies that belief.

"We want to show that there had been structural changes in the white matter of the brain during young adulthood. The white matter of the brain is a connection, linking the various regions of the brain to support the ability to think. As it turned out, the connection is strengthened when we are young adults," said Lebel.

In a report in the Journal of Neuroscience, Beaulieu and Lebel using Magnetic

Resonance Imaging or MRI to scan the brains of 103 healthy people aged 5 to 32 years. Each participant studied at least up to scan twice.

The results showed that young adult human brain continues to develop connections to the frontal lobe, which is the channel responsible for cognitive tasks complicated.

The researchers speculate that this may be due to the amount of human experience, especially in young adults, such as education after secondary school, starting a career, independence, developing new social and family relationships.

Important observations conducted by researchers when reviewing the brain scans is that in some people, some brain regions decreased the amount of white matter from time to time. It is associated with decreased brain function.

Researchers speculate that this observation needs to be studied further because it can provide a new understanding of the relationship between mental disorders and brain structure. Because this disorder typically develops in adolescence or young adulthood.

"What is interesting is that many psychiatric and other disorders emerge during adolescence. So we thought that maybe if a particular channel function began to decline rapidly, it does not mean is responsible for mental disorders, but it may be one of the factors that make a person more prone to interference , "Beaulieu said as quoted from Medicalxpress.com,

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