Scientists have been intrigued by why some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs while others do not.
In the largest imaging study of its kind, involving the brains of 1,896 14-year-olds, scientists have discovered a number of previously “unknown networks” that go a long way towards an answer.
Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan, psychiatrists at the University of Vermont, report that differences in these networks provide strong evidence that some teenagers are at higher risk for drug and alcohol experimentation — simply because their brains work differently, making them more impulsive, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.
This discovery helps answer a long-standing chicken-or-egg question. “The differences in these networks seem to precede drug use,” says Garavan.
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In the largest imaging study of its kind, involving the brains of 1,896 14-year-olds, scientists have discovered a number of previously “unknown networks” that go a long way towards an answer.
Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan, psychiatrists at the University of Vermont, report that differences in these networks provide strong evidence that some teenagers are at higher risk for drug and alcohol experimentation — simply because their brains work differently, making them more impulsive, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.
This discovery helps answer a long-standing chicken-or-egg question. “The differences in these networks seem to precede drug use,” says Garavan.