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Neuroplasticity in the healthy teen brain

We know that many skills may be most readily acquired in a general sequence of brain development. For example, it is easier to learn languages during the infant and toddler years than it is even in early childhood. Such periods of easy acquisition are called sensitive periods.

Adolescence itself is a sensitive period for multiple key life skills, including:

Life skills acquired in adolescence are important protective factors against substance use. For instance, some FCD students define "fitting in" as "being popular," while others talk about "finding out where you belong," or "where you can be accepted for who you are." Whatever a student's own definition, fitting in is a major developmental task for adolescents. How students accomplish this task shapes their brains moving forward. If a teen's brain is shaped by a feeling of acceptance for who she is and a sense of belonging to groups that values her, her brain in this regard will easily build a layer of protection against substance abuse. Other layers of protection can be also added - by the ability to identify the significant risk involved in one-time substance use, the ability to weigh that risk against any potential benefits, and the ability to delay any gratification substance use might bring to the student until she is able to identify and choose between healthier alternatives that fulfill those same wants or needs.

During adolescence, the brain is the most plastic it will ever be again. All of the experiences, patterns of behavior, peer bonds, and self-perceptions teens develop during this time can mold the brain - like Silly Putty - into the shape of the adult to come. The teen with a passion for music develops a finer ear for pitch and tone, while the teen athlete's brain becomes efficient at producing the hormones necessary for peak performance. These easily-acquired, healthy changes in adolescence also become more difficult to lose into adulthood for the learning teen than for the adult who attempts to build similar skillsets or capacities at a later age. The more healthy neural adaptations to reality a teen can acquire, the healthier her adulthood is positioned to be. The more protective factors against risky behaviors like substance abuse teens can acquire - and the earlier they can do so - the more easily the brain can withstand the lure of unhealthy behaviors throughout life.

Neuroplasticity, addiction, and recovery

Consider again the Silly Putty egg with its mirror-image newsprint. Though it was quite easy to make the imprint, removing the image will take more work. This illustrates another principle of brain plasticity: especially as we age, changes that came from plastic adaptations to the outside influences of our lived realities are harder to unmake than they were to make in the first place.

Addiction to alcohol and other drugs is one such adaptation. Alcohol and other drugs affect the parts of our brains responsible for motivating and reinforcing behavior. When a teen uses substances, the teen brain rewires itself in response by lessening its own natural ability to motivate us toward healthy alternatives and to reinforce healthy behaviors that do not include use. Unfortunately, while the brain naturally reinforces and motivates many behaviors, substance abuse mostly reinforces and motivates further use. This chain reaction produces addiction.

Given the plasticity of the adolescent brain, this unhealthy adaptation is particularly easy to make. Adolescent capacities for risk assessment, emotional regulation, and delayed gratification are still developing. Therefore, the adolescent capacity to resist the cravings and impulses created when alcohol and other drugs motivate the brain toward continued, progressive use is low.

From the perspective of brain plasticity, recovery is the ongoing effort to over-write the changes made to brain chemistry during addiction. Both the signal router and Silly Putty versions of brain change occur in addiction and again in recovery. The teen brain in particular has some strong capacity to create new information pathways and make new uses of pre-existing ones.

Have you ever tried to replace a habit you were trying to break with one you thought was healthier? It was a bit of a struggle, wasn't it? Your process may have been similar to the processes begun by those who enter recovery. Over time and with consistent practice of new behaviors and healthy lived experiences, healthier pathways are more easily accessed and the old addiction-fueled pathways begin to atrophy. The ongoing result is newer, healthier motivational pathways with an increasingly powerful influence on behavior. The brain, even in healthy recovery unfortunately, is still shaped by teen addiction to substances before recovery began. You can rub the newspaper imprint from the Silly Putty, but some vestige of it will remain; you cannot remove all of the ink entirely.

Just as addiction is easier to develop during adolescence, long-term recovery that begins during adolescence can also take advantage of the greater plasticity to facilitate this over-writing process. Adults, on the other hand, may have a more difficult time with this process. This is one of the many reasons we at FCD urge intervention as early as possible in the case of a young person making increasingly risky decisions about alcohol and other drug use.

Always learning, always growing

The many sciences studying the brain are in a constant state of frontier expansion. The results of this exploration can shift our understanding of the ground already covered. At FCD, we are committed to incorporating the relevant aspects of such game-changing research into our understanding of teen substance abuse and the many factors that protect against it. We welcome you to join us in growing your understanding of the teen brain for the prevention benefit of the healthy kids you know!

For further reading on brain plasticity as it applies to these issues as well as those beyond substance abuse and addiction, we recommend The Brain That Changes Itself, by Dr. Norman Doidge.

Author

David Sherrell joined FCD in 2009 and is currently a Senior Prevention Specialist. He was educated at independent schools and Vassar College, where his studies included Developmental Psychology and Political Science. David has experience as a chemical dependency counseling intern and a mental health worker, in addition to certification as an alcohol and drug studies specialist. He holds a BS in Psychology from the University of Phoenix, and is pursuing a Master's degree in Psychology at Rutgers University.