[Music] in an approach called brainstorm I discuss in the book by that name the idea that there's an essence of adolescence that for most of us whether we're parents or adolescents we just haven't known about and that this Essence fortunately spells the word essence itself and let's review the top four aspects of the changes in the Adolescent brain that can help us understand how compassion and empathy at the root of well-being can be cultivated during adolescence and how we as adults can even recapture this Essence in our own life basically the essence is emotional spark e s social engagement s novelty n and creative exploration CE when you look at these four features what you find is that the Adolescent brain is changing in very powerful ways so instead of doing what the child's brain does which is to keep on accumulating more connections called synaptic connections pruning some away and making new milein creating a deeper connection and more efficient connection among neurons in various ways as a child grows there's a significant onset at the beginning of adolescence somewhere around puberty but not exactly the same as that time of sexual maturation that the brain begins to do two things one it begins to prune itself away meaning it gets to carve away existing synaptic connections and even remove some neurons this decrease in the number of neurons in their connections is called pruning and it's like pruning in a garden the second phase of this remodeling of the ad and brain that surprised everyone was after this pruning is happening in a big way myelination begins and myin is the healthy sheath that connects the synaptically interconnected neurons when you have myin that's connecting two neurons what it allows them to do is have the way they communicate be more efficient in that it's faster and more coordinated and the numbers are really fascinating the speed of the action potential the ions moving in and out of the membrane is a 100 times faster and the resting period called a refractory period after a neuron fires that it needs to rest before it will fire again is 30 times quicker so 30 * 100 to 3,000 melinated circuits are 3,000 times more coordinated and efficient they're faster of course but even more than speed they're more integrated they allow allow this whole system to work in a much more effective way so overall remodeling includes pruning and myelination and this myelinating process along with the remaining neurons that are still there allows this system of the Adolescent brain to become more integrated to connect the differentiate areas and Link them now what does that mean well first it means that the Adolescent period is a period not where raging hormones are going out of control or that the Adolescent is just a period of immaturity it's a necessary period of development to allow the Adolescent to get ready to leave home now part of that is to increase the ability of this adolescent to move toward what's unfamiliar what's uncertain what can be uncomfortable and even what can be unsafe this natur natural drive to experience the unfamiliar the uncertain the uncomfortable and the unsafe requires that nature change certain circuits in the brain and some of those circuits that we've discovered in recent times are the reward circuitry of the brain which drops the Baseline dopamine level and increases release levels and what that does it makes an adolescent prone to not only feeling out of sorts and bored with just the status quo but the Rel release of dopamine is in a large part governed by novelty doing something new both with what you're thinking about and what you're doing with your body and how you're interacting with other people so this dopamine change explains how nature tries to get the Adolescent out of the house but another way that nature has done this is something called hyper rational thinking and with Hyper rational thinking what happens is the natural appraisal of the pros and cons of a decision are weighted in favor of the exciting parts of doing something and though an adolescent knows about danger then there's a decreased emphasis on the significance of the downside of a choice when you combine hyper rational skewing of the balance in favor of the exciting things of a choice and you add that to the dopamine changes of the reward system you can see why adolescents are taking risky behaviors and endangering themselves not just because of impulsivity which is true in the beginning of the teenage years but actually going well into adolescence and Adolescence lasts into the mid 20s this remodeling period helps us see that adolescence does not end when the 20th birthday happens and the teen years are over so that's another myth we've debunked the myth then that adolescence and teenage years are the same adolescence is not a period of immaturity it's it's a necessary phase of life to change the structure of the brain we've learned that adolescence is not just a time where impulsivity is leading to danger but it's hyper rational thinking and dopamine changes and another myth we need to debunk is the idea that adolesence is a time when you are just driven mad by raging hormones Instead This remodeling of the brain is what's changing the relationship between emotional spark and social engagement and Novelty and creative exploration and these changes in the brain is very profound for emotional spark we see that the Adolescent brain is literally filled with more emotional processes emerging from the body the lower areas of the brain including the brain stem and the lyic area as these emotional processes move upward into the cortex where reasoning happens so an emotional spark has a downside you can feel Moody irritable be able to trust your own emotional state the upside is life is on fire and you have filled with passion during this period social engagement is very important especially when we look to compassion and empathy in that adolescents are driven to push away from their parents not totally but to push away from them for sure and to move toward their peers this is a natural way where even in other Maman species we see that there is safety in association being with other adolescents can be what allows you to survive and if you're not a member of our group it can allow you to be at risk of dying so there can be a sense of urgency a sense of life and death that an adolescent expresses to a parent I need to have this kind of shoe I need to have this kind of jacket I need to go to that party and you don't need to buy the shoe or the jacket or let them go to the party necessarily but at least as parents we can understand in a compassionate way feeling for their suffering an empathic way understanding their point of view that this life and death feeling is not something they're just making up because they're caving into peer pressure it can be from millions of years of evolution that have basically built into the DNA that if you're an adolescent you should be a member of at least a friendship if not a larger group now the downside of this social engagement process is that you can forsake morality for the benefit of membership and that's called peer pressure the positive side of this social engagement is that you learn social skills that can last a lifetime you develop friendships that can teach you how to be connected to other people because the self is not living in isolation and all the studies of well-being mental well-being medical well-being longevity happiness show that relationships are a primary factor that allow you to achieve all those positive States what's and and his novelty and we've seen that the dopamine changes drive you to experience new things the hyper rational thinking also pushes in that direction and so we can see that novelty is built into what the Adolescent experience is all about the downside of course is risk and danger and being injured and unfortunately the research shows that adolescents are three times more likely to be seriously injured or to be killed during the Adolescent period even though their bodies are stronger and healthier than at any other time what's C well actually before we get to CE what's the upside of novelty the upside of novelty is it gets you ready to try on the unfamiliar the uncertain the uncomfortable to try on the unsafe so you can leave home and that is a matter of literally life and death to actually allow our species to go out and expand uh away from the family unit and what's creative exploration about C is the term we use for the part of the essence of ad Ence that allows you to challenge your mind the Adolescent mind is built to challenge the status quo to look at what the laws are look at what the rules are look at what the world that the adults have given and to say I'm not sure that's a good way it should be and I'm not sure that's the way it has to be so the Adolescent mind is pushing pushing pushing the boundaries now the downside of course is that as a child you're just soaking in the world's knowledge and you just accept that that's the first dozen years of life life or so this second Dozen Years of life is a time where you can feel very disoriented you can feel disillusioned that the parents you held up as gods and goddesses are no longer the heroes you once thought they were you actually see them as fallible human beings so this can be very disorienting and then of course for the experience of pushing against the status quo for some kids it can feel unsettling what's the upside of it the upside for the individual is the incredible excitement of imagining A Whole New World world and for our human family you can look at the facts that major Innovations in art in music in science and technology have all come from adolescent minds and so Innovation emerges from adolescence and in fact you could make an argument that the reason our human species is so profoundly adaptive to all regions of this planet for good or for bad but we have a popular ated everywhere is because of the Ingenuity the courage and creativity of the Adolescent mind so I believe very deeply in terms of being empathic for adolescents we need to understand these deep changes and allow them to learn about how the brain is changing to learn about this period so we can support them and as adults not only are we allow relationships with adolescence be better but if you look at all the studies of neuroplasticity of how we keep our brains young throughout the lifespan you'll find in fact that these four features keeping passion in your life with an emotional spark keeping relationship strong with your social networks of support and social engagement trying new things with novelty and challenging your mind with creative expiration these are the top four ways you can keep your brain growing well and keeping yourself vital throughout the lifespan built into all that is compassion feeling another person's suffering and W to reach out and help and empathy understanding from another person's point of view and when we look deeply at this brainstorm approach compassion and empathy are built in to how we can allow adolescence growing through this period adults trying to reclaim their Essence to each find compassion and empathy in their lives to try to support a life of connection meaning Equanimity and a sense of purpose and when we do that we have what the Greeks called udonia and all sorts of great things happen we improve the regulation of our gene expression to prevent certain illnesses as a study of Barbara Frederickson and colleagu so showed we have the presence of mind to actually improve tarase levels to actually change the enzyme and raise it that repairs the ends of our chromosomes tiir we can improve our immune function with this kind of presence this mindfulness so in all these ways deeply being present for adolescence as an adult deeply being present for the experience of adolescence as an adolescent oneself actually improves this presence which is the basis of well-being the basis of compassion the basis of empathy so together we can actually expand our identity not just realize we're separate but realize together we can make this world a more compassionate place a Kinder place and a place filled with empathy