Romeo And Juliet Teenage Brain Development

Child psychiatrist, Jay Giedd, once said, “Adolescence is a time of tumultuous change in the brain.” Adolescence slowly changes the underdeveloped brain causing teenagers to make unreasonable decisions, act on impulse, rebel, and assert their independence. In the play, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is about two star-crossed lovers from feuding families who act rashly and end up killing themselves. In the book, Shattering Glass, by Gail Giles four popular guys try to make the class nerd popular, but they create a monster instead and they end up killing him. In The Tragedy

The teenage brain, which is not fully developed yet, causes teenagers to astray from their regular behavior. In the video of “The mysterious workings of the Adolescent Brain”, it informs us about the premature prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of making decisions, inhibiting inappropriate behavior, and self-awareness. The unfinished prefrontal cortex makes it harder for teenagers to understand other people’s perspective. The limbic system is involved with reward and emotion processing. The reward process of the limbic system is hypersensitive making it more enjoyable to do something like risk taking (Blakemore). In the article “The Teenage Brain”, it uses brain-imaging studies to show that teenagers are inadequate at reading emotions. Also, the brain-imaging studies show that it’s harder for teenagers to stay focused since teenagers can’t mute the activity that involves emotions. Overall, teenage brains aren’t able to hold control of emotions well (Underwood). Also in the article “The Teenage Brain”, risk taking is proven to be in the “adolescent picture”, which consists of finding your identity or to experiment with new things. The dangerous part about trying to find your identity or experimenting revolves around your unfinished front lobes. Teenagers don’t typically think about consequences for their actions, which is caused by their premature frontal lobe (Underwood and

The teenage brain development can explain the main character's actions like acting on impulse, making poor decisions and rebelling or taking risks. The question, why do teenagers act the way they do? Can finally be answered, the development of the adolescent brain influences the teenagers to act they way they do. Just like what Jay Giedd once said, adolescence is truly a time of tumultuous change for the