Dual systems model and adolescence

Welcome back to our third installment of our Brain & Emotions series! 🧠 This episode is about understanding risk-taking in adolescence. Compared to children and adults, teenagers tend to take more risks than children and adults in their daily lives. 🚫 Why is that? There are many theories about this, but one theory is the “dual systems model”. This theory suggests that there are changes in the teenage brain that make risk-taking more likely. 💥 On one hand, the teenage brain is very sensitive to rewards (see episode 2 about this!). 🍭 At the same time, the brain systems that allow us to regulate (or control) our behaviours may not be fully developed yet. The mismatch between these two brain systems is thought to make teenagers more likely to take risks.

Let’s talk about this theory! Do you think this makes sense to explain risk-taking in adolescence? Let us know in the comments below! 👇 (Special thanks to former DSEC Lab volunteer Bingyi Lin for her work in creating these slides!)

Reward system in the brain

Welcome back to our second installment of our Brain & Emotions series! 🧠 This episode is about the reward system. There are a number of regions in the brain that tend to activate when we encounter rewarding things. 🍭 Adolescence is often accompanied by heightened response to reward in this brain system. How does it work? ❓ Swipe through to learn more! (Special thanks to former DSEC Lab volunteer Bingyi Lin for her work in creating these slides!)

#psychology #neuroscience #research #explainittome #brain #reward #adolescence

Get to know your brain: what parts of the brain process social and emotional information?

Our brain allows us to make sense of our environment and guides our behaviour. How does it do this? 🧠 These slides are brief overviews of some key regions of the brain that work together to process all the social and emotional information we encounter in our daily lives. Think about it: your brain has to detect, interpret, and respond to lots of information from other people… including their smiles or frowns, the content of what they say to us, and the context we are in! 🤯

Think of this as a primer to your brain in its social environment. But, make sure to check out the last slide: none of these brain regions work alone! 🧩

Shout out to @DSECLab volunteer and former directed lab student Jay Burns for this guide of the social brain! Have you heard of these brain regions before? ❔

#psychology #neuroscience #brain #research

What is fMRI and how do researchers use it to study the brain?

Have you ever heard of ✨ fMRI ✨? It stands for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging! This is a tool that neuroscientists use to understand the brain’s structure and how it works. 🧠 Flip through this slide deck for more info on how fMRI works, and how it was used in one of our lab’s studies to understand how youth’s brains respond to emotional faces and voices! 👉 (Special thanks to Reem Atallah for putting these helpful slides together!)

Have you ever been in an fMRI study? Let us know below! 🤷‍♂️

Understanding the amygdala and its emotional functions

What is the amygdala?! 🧠 Neuroscientists have spent a lot of time trying to understand how this part of the brain works! We know that the amygdala responds to important things in our environment, and that its shape and function change across development. Flip through the slides made by DSEC Lab volunteer Bingyi Lin to learn more! 👉