Dealing with the phase of aggression and depression? Especially when you have a teenager at home, even day to day things can get harder. But who do you blame, especially in the world where kids are prone to different kinds of addictions? According to a researcher from Leiden University, Netherlands, who examined about 300 subjects from the age group of 8-29 years, stated that it makes learning easier for children in their adolescent age.
The brains of adolescents react more responsively to receiving rewards, according to the study by Sabine Peters. "The adolescent brain is very sensitive to feedback. That makes adolescence the ideal time to acquire and retain new information," said Peters. She used a large data set for her research with MRI scans.
Over a period of five years, no fewer than 736 brain scans were made of a total. According to Peters, the data set is about ten times larger than that of most comparable studies. In the MRI scanner, the participants had to solve a memory game. During that game, the researchers in her team gave feedback on the participants' performance.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. "It showed that adolescents responded keenly to educational feedback," said Peters. "If the adolescent received useful feedback, then you saw the corpus striatum being activated. This was not the case with less pertinent feedback, for example, if the test person already knew the answer," said Peters. "The stronger your brain recognises that difference, the better the performance in the learning task. Brain activation could even predict learning performance two years into the future," said Peters.
