Speakers Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: Cognitive Neuroscientist

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore studies the social brain -- the network of brain regions involved in understanding other people -- and how it develops in adolescents.

Why you should listen to her:

Remember being a teenager? Rocked internally with hormones, outwardly with social pressures, you sometimes wondered what was going on in your head. So does Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. And what she and others in her field are finding is: The adolescent brain really is different.

New brain imaging research and clever experiments are revealing how the cortex develops -- the executive part of the brain that handles things like planning, self-awareness, analysis of consequences and behavioral choices. It turns out that these regions develop more slowly during adolescence, and in fascinating ways that relate to risk-taking, peer pressure and learning.

Which leads to a bigger question: How can we better target education to speak to teenagers' growing, changing brains?

"Sarah-Jayne Blakemore emphasises that learning must be seen as a life-long process."
SuePalmer.co.uk

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Quotes by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

  • “Almost 400 years ago, Shakespeare was portraying adolescents in a very similar light to the light that we portray them in today — but today we try to understand their behavior in terms of the underlying changes that are going on in their brain.”

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