Five young men in sneakers and jeans troop into a waiting room at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., and drape themselves all over the chairs in classic collapsed-teenager mode, trailing backpacks, a CD player and a laptop loaded with computer games. It’s midafternoon, and they are, of course, tired, but even so their presence adds a jangly, hormonal buzz to the bland, institutional setting. Fair-haired twins Corey and Skyler Mann, 16, and their burlier big brothers Anthony and Brandon, 18, who are also twins, plus eldest brother Christopher, 22, are here to have their heads examined. Literally. The five brothers from Orem, Utah, are the latest recruits to a giant study that’s been going on in this building since 1991. Its goal: to determine how the brain develops from childhood into adolescence and on into early adulthood. It is the project of Dr. Jay Giedd , chief of brain imaging in the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. Giedd, 43, has devoted the past 13 years to peering inside the heads of 1,800 kids and teenagers using high-powered magnetic resonance imaging . For each volunteer, he creates a unique photo album, taking MRI snapshots every two years and building a record as the brain morphs and grows. Giedd started out investigating the developmental origins of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism but soon discovered that so little was known about how the brain is supposed to develop that it was impossible to figure out where things might be going wrong. In a way, the vast project that has become his life’s work is nothing more than an attempt to establish a gigantic control group. “It turned out that normal brains were so interesting in themselves,” he marvels. “And the adolescent studies have been the most surprising of all.” Before the imaging studies by Giedd and his collaborators at UCLA, Harvard, the Montreal Neurological Institute and a dozen other institutions, most scientists believed the brain was largely a finished product by the time a child reached the age of 12. Not only is it full-grown in size, Giedd explains, but “in a lot of psychological literature, traced back to [Swiss psychologist Jean] Piaget, the highest rung in the ladder of cognitive development was about age 12 — formal operations.” In the past, children entered initiation rites and started learning trades at about the onset of puberty. Some theorists concluded from this that the idea of adolescence was an artificial construct, a phenomenon invented in the post-Industrial Revolution years. Giedd’s scanning studies proved what every parent of a teenager knows: not only is the brain of the adolescent far from mature, but both gray and white matter undergo extensive structural changes well past puberty. “When we started,” says Giedd, “we thought we’d follow kids until about 18 or 20. If we had to pick a number now, we’d probably go to age 25.” Now that MRI studies have cracked open a window on the developing brain, researchers are looking at how the newly detected physiological changes might account for the adolescent behaviors so familiar to parents: emotional outbursts, reckless risk taking and rule breaking, and the impassioned pursuit of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Some experts believe the structural changes seen at adolescence may explain the timing of such major mental illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These diseases typically begin in adolescence and contribute to the high rate of teen suicide. Increasingly, the wild conduct once blamed on “raging hormones” is being seen as the by-product of two factors: a surfeit of hormones, yes, but also a paucity of the cognitive controls needed for mature behavior. In recent years, Giedd has shifted his focus to twins, which is why the Manns are such exciting recruits. Although most brain development seems to follow a set plan, with changes following cues that are preprogrammed into genes, other, subtler changes in gray matter reflect experience and environment. By following twins, who start out with identical — or, in fraternal twins, similar — programming but then diverge as life takes them on different paths, he hopes to tease apart the influences of nature and nurture. Ultimately, he hopes to find, for instance, that Anthony Mann’s plan to become a pilot and Brandon’s to study law will lead to brain differences that are detectable on future MRIs. The brain, more than any other organ, is where experience becomes flesh. See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.
See pictures of the college dorm’s evolution.
