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Affects of Drug use on adolecense



             6) Changes in sleep patterns, including a tendency to go to sleep later and wake up later .
             7) Puberty in humans .
             In addition to the changes listed above, we now know that there are a variety of neurobiological changes that take place during the adolescent age range. These changes will be reviewed below. Some researchers have begun to incorporate these neurobiological changes into their definitions of adolescence (e.g., Spear, 2000a,b).
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             3. Brain development during adolescence .
             Overproduction of neuronal tissue is a central theme in early brain development, from the womb to late childhood. Human infants are born with far more neurons than are present in the adult brain. The selection process that determines whether an individual cell lives or dies is based on several factors, including the transmission of neurotrophic factors from the post-synaptic cell to the pre-synaptic cell in response to excitatory synaptic activity. In this way, cells that fire together wire together, and those that do not make meaningful contacts with other cells do not survive. One key benefit of this process is that it allows a child's brain to be sculpted by his/her interactions with the outside world (Chugani, 1998). .
             In recent years, it has become clear that, during adolescence, as in childhood, the brain is highly plastic and shaped by experience. A substantial number of synapses are eliminated, or pruned, in the cortex during adolescence, and this process is presumably influenced, at least in part, by interactions with the outside world (Huttenlocher, 1979; Lidow et al., 1991; Seeman, 1999). It is tempting to conclude that adolescent brain development must simply be an extension of childhood brain development; that it represents a transition stage between childhood and adulthood in a manner similar to how adolescence itself has long been viewed. In actuality, it appears that many of the changes that take place during the second decade of life are novel and do not simply represent the trailing remnants of childhood plasticity.


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