Youth and Adults Working Together for a
Safe and Healthy Community

Highlights from November 3, 2007 Summit on Youth
with adolescent brain development expert Michael Nerney

"It was thought at one time that the foundation of the brain's architecture was laid down by the time a child is five or six. Indeed, 95 percent of the structure of the brain has been formed by then. But researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD, and McGill University in Montreal have discovered changes in the structure of the brain that appear relatively late in child development."

From Inside the Teenage Brain, produced by PBS.

Topics in Alcohol Research is a website maintained by Aaron White, an alcohol researcher at Duke University  Medical Center. The site has a good collection of news articles from various media on the topic of alcohol and its impact on brain development.

According to research by Ken C. Winters, Ph.D., a psychiatry professor
at the University of Minnesota, immature brain development may put teens at greater risk of substance abuse and arrested brain development. To read more, click here.

Brain research has found strong evidence that when it comes to maturity, organization and control, key parts of the brain related to emotions, judgment and "thinking ahead"
are the last to arrive. To read more, click here.

Teens' impulsive behavior is due to incomplete brain development.

This paper was written by a Bryn Mawr student. To read more, click here.
Bibliography resources included.