Changes in the brain during adolescence impact cognition, emotion and behaviour makes the teen brain unique and more open to taking risks, a new study said.

The study reviews the results of the National Institute of Mental Health's (NIMH) Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project, which indicated that the gray matter increases in volume till the early teens and then decreases until old age.

Findings of the new study have been published by Jay N Giedd in the latest issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. “Adolescence is a time of substantial neurobiological and behavioural change, but the teen brain is not a broken or defective adult brain,” the Researcher wrote.

“These changes and the enormous plasticity of the teen brain make adolescence a time of great risk and great opportunity,” the Researcher added.

The article said, “Changes in the brain during childhood and adolescent development that are being documented through exquisite imaging by Giedd and others hold the promise for the development of hypotheses about the potential origins of behaviour that we have observed clinically for years.”