[Rolo]

The Developing Brain: Birth through mid 20's

Protecting You/Protecting Me focuses on preventing damage to the developing brain from age 12 to the mid 20's, when the exposure to alcohol is the greatest among American teens.

The Brain Continues to develop well into a persons mid 20's. At birth roughly 40% of the brain cells are connected.

Before the age of 10, the brain is developing the basic capacities of survival - vision, speech, memory, emotions, attention, concentration, and fine and gross motor skills.

In the pre-teen years the brain is engaged in managing puberty, learning to think abstractly and forming more sophisticated relationships.

In the last few years - through a person's mid 20's - the brain is involved in developing self-awareness, highly complex interpersonal relationships, highly complex abstract thinking and spirituality, and the ability to plan, make complex judgments - including moral judgments, creating and problem solving…moving beyond the basics toward maturity.

From 12 to the mid 20's, the years in which American teens are the most exposed to alcohol, three critical periods of development take place, each accompanied by a spurt of neural (dendrite) growth:

Level I Abstract Thinking - 10-20 years - development of ability to relate functions - such as the ability to relate addition and subtraction and understand why they are opposites, and the ability to combine dissimilar social interactions and emotions - such as combining honesty or dishonesty with kindness to explain the "social lie".

Level II Abstract Thinking - 14-15 years - development of the ability to understand how functions are alike and different - such as how addition and division are alike and different, and the ability to combine complex thinking with social interactions and emotions - such as combining judgment with directness, kindness and tact at the same time to offer constructive criticism.

Level III Abstract Thinking - 18-20 years - development of the ability to hold several issues, events, circumstances, functions, characteristics, etc., in mind at the same time and compare and interrelate them.

Anything that interferes with how the brain operates during this 20 + year period can change the course of a person's mental, emotional, cognitive, and social development…and alter his or her opportunities for success.

http://www.madd.org/under21/0,1056,9666,00.html

Fom the first 22 years, then it looks like we can expect a bit... I look forward seeing how it turns out by year 25 ;-)))