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New insights into how the brain is wired and reshaped throughout much of a person’s life have major implications for society, the neuroscientists claim. At 18, the brain is still undergoing major changes. Our twenties are a time when we are highly susceptible to mental health disorders, something which resolves around the age of 30.
Professor Peter Jones, from Cambridge University, told a press briefing in London: ‘To have a definition of when you move from childhood to adulthood looks increasingly absurd. It’s a much more nuanced transition. I guess systems like the education system, the health system and the legal system make it convenient for themselves by having definitions.’
Professor Daniel Geschwind, from the University of California at Los Angeles, stressed the degree of individual variability in brain development, saying education systems mistakenly tend to focus on groups, not individuals. Professor Geschwind added: ‘These are larger questions that go beyond the science. ‘There are individual trajectories… development takes place over decades. But this varies from individual to individual.’