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Thank you everyone.
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I have brought for you a human brain.
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So this is a real human brain.
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When I look at this brain,
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I am reminded that we are neurocircuitry.
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We are neurocircuitry, and every ability we have
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is because we have cells that perform that function.
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We know more about the human brain than we've ever known before.
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We've learned things in the last 10 to 20 years
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--most of your life span--
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that has completely shifted the way
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neuroscientists think about this organ and our relationship with it.
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When I was in school back in the 80s, we were taught
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that the brain cells you were born with are the brain cells you'll die with,
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and you are not going to get anymore along the way.
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We do know that our brain is capable of growing some new neurons,
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and this is neurogenesis.
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We are capable of growing new neurons, particularly in response to trauma.
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In addition, neuroplasticity, is the ability of our brain cells
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to rearrange who they are communicating with.
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What this means, is that the brain you woke in with this morning,
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is not identical to the brain that you are going to take home with you tonight.
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In addition, we understand that we are capable of mindfulness.
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Mindfulness is our ability to observe
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the neurocircuitry we are running inside of our heads.
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But on top of simply observing in our neurocircuitry,
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we are capable of changing our thoughts and changing our brain.
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We have the ability to pick and choose what's going on inside of our heads.
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We typically run three types of neurocircuitry.
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We think thoughts,
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we stimulate emotions and feel emotions,
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and we run physiological responses
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to what we are thinking and what we are feeling.
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I have the ability to think a thought,
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stimulate an emotional circuit,
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and then run a physiological response to what I am thinking.
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From the moment I think of a thought that stimulates my anger circuit,
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to the time that I run my physiological response
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where I down noradrenalin into my blood stream,
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it flashes through me and flashes out of me.
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From the beginning of the thought,
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to the time when my blood is clean of that chemistry,
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takes less than 90 seconds.
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I called this the 90-second rule.
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How many of you have the ability to stay angry
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for longer than 90 seconds.
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What you are doing,
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is you are rethinking the thought that is restimulating the anger circuit,
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which is restimulating the physiological response,
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and we can stay mad for days.
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The bottom line is, I am neurocircuitry. We are neurocircuitry.
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My neurocircuitry is my neurocircuitry,
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and you do not have the ability
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to stimulate and trigger my circuitry without my permission.
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You cannot make me angry,
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unless I stick my trigger out there
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for you to pound on and stimulate my neurocircuitry.
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If I give you the power to trigger my neurocircuitry,
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then I have given you my power.
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And if I give you my power, then I become vulnerable to you
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through manipulation, through advertising, through marketing.
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through peer pressure and through abuse.
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Bottom line is, we are neurocircuitry.
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We are these incredible celled brain filled with these beautiful cells.
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So how does it work?
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Stimulation streams in through our sensory systems.
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It integrates and organizes as it passes up the spinal cord,
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and it aims for the outer portion of our brain, the cerebral cortex.
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The cerebral cortex is divided into two different groups of cells.
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Our outer layers, for a higher cognitive thinking,
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and our inner layers, for emotion.
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So information streams in through our sensory systems,
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and it aims directly for the inner group of cells of our limbic system.
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And the cells in the limbic system are asking the question, moment by moment,
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"Am I safe?"
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"Am I safe?"
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I feel safe when enough of the information streaming in through the sensory systems
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feels familiar.
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When the world feels familiar, my amygdala is calm,
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and I feel safe.
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The interesting thing
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is that as information comes in and it stimulates my limbic system,
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my limbic system then sends that information
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throughout my nervous system, including my higher cortex.
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What this means is that,
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although many of us may think of our cells as thinking creatures who feel,
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biologically, we really are feeling creatures who think.
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We are feeling creatures who think;
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and this becomes significant in the way we live in the external world.
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Information streams in, goes straight to the amygdala;
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the amygdala says how much feels familiar,
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and if it feels familiar, then I feel calm.
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When I feel calm, the cells right next to that, the hippocampus,
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turn on and they are capable of learning and memory.
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But let's say that, all of the sudden, the building starts to shake.
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[If] that happens, your amygdala goes unfamiliar,
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"Alert, alert, self preservation!", you bolt out the door,
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shut down the hippocampus and don't care what I have to say anymore, right?
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A great example about the relationship between the amygdala and the hippocampus,
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is test anxiety.
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We all know what it feels like to have that knot inside of our belly
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and then our throats get tight
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and our brains feel like they are going to explode, everything is moving so fast:
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"Alert, alert, panic, panic, anxiety, anxiety, oh my gosh!"
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But the secret here is that I have a higher cortical thinking.
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I have the ability to consciously choose:
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"OK, I have other circuits I can run, I can turn on my higher cortical mind,
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I can bring my mind to the present moment, I can look around, take new pictures,
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I can see I am safe, I am safe, and I am not going to die.
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It's just an exam and I've prepared for it and I know some of these answers."
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If my amygdala would just calm enough
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so that I could access that information in my hippocampus,
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then I could answer the questions.
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So this is what's going on.
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Everything that has anything to do with anything is our relationship
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between the amygdala and the hippocampus.
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This is really important news; big news, big news, we didn't know this.
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My generation, and generations before me, we did not know about the 90-second rule,
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and we did not understand the neurocircuitry of the brain.
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So, all you have to do, is open up the newspaper and you will see
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someone has killed someone because someone's amygdala was on alert.
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Somebody's divorcing somebody because somebody did not feel safe.
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Everything has something to do with the amygdala, and I think
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we should all wear shirts that say, "I love my amygdala."
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(Laughter)
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"I love my amygdala."
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What is going on with the teenage brain?
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How many of you have had a parent or an adult
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say something like this to you in the last few years:
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"I just don't recognize you anymore. What happened to my little angel?"
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How many of you have had that?
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There is a biological reason for that.
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How many of you have had a parent or an adult say something like:
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"I don't understand you! You used to love to do this all the time,
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I bought you this but you don't use it, I don't get it, what's going on?"
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There is a biological reason for that.
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How many of you have had a parent or an adult saying something to you like:
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I'm just really not very comfortable with your new friends."
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Yeah! There is a reason for that. We are biology.
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So, what's going on?
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We are born with twice as many neurons as we are ever going to use.
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Isn't that nice we are born with an abundance of cells?
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And then, the next two to three years, the neurons that are stimulated
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will connect with other neurons in neurocircuitry,
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and the cells that are not stimulated, will die away.
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And then, for the next couple of years, ten years or so,
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I'm pretty much about me, right? It's all about me, little Jill.
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I got this new body, I am trying to figure out how to get the body to work,
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eventually, it's going to hop, skip and jump,
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and then, I am going to learn about communication.
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How to pick a voice out from background sound,
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how to make sound, how to place meaning on sound.
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Then, I am going to get socialized with little people my size,
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and my siblings and the adult world,
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but, it is pretty much all about me.
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Then, you put me in school, where I will learn more about communication,
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about spelling, reading and writing.
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I'm going to learn about mathematics and abstract thinking.
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And if I am lucky, I am going to be exposed to music,
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the arts and technologies
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and all kinds of interesting things that will stimulate me.
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But ultimately, it's all about me.
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Well, somehow,
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our one obligation to our species as a biological creature, is reproduction.
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So somehow, we have to get ourselves out of the 'me-me-me'
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into the, "Oh, aren't you cute?"
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(Laughter)
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In order to do that, during the pre-puberty years,
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the brain goes through what we called an exuberance
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of the dendritic connections inside of our brains.
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And these little people, if you know them couple years right before puberty hits,
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they are really, really smart, little sponges looking for information.
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They are curious about everything, they want to know, and how
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they want to know why, and just want to understand it all.
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Then, their bodies are prepared for puberty.
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And then puberty comes.
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And with puberty comes several major shifts.
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One of the first ones is
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we are going to go through a major physical growth spurt.
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When we are going through a major physical growth spurt,
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our entire body changes.
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It changes and it's not as agile,
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so our amygdala is on a little bit of alert, which is interesting,
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but it's a little bit of alert, "What's going on?"
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And on top of that,
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then we are going to have our hormonal systems,
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they are going to start flowing through our body,
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and with that are going to come all kinds of mood swings
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and all kinds of interesting behaviors.
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On top of that,
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there is going to be what we called a pruning back.
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A pruning back of 50% of the synaptic connections
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inside of our brain.
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We literally lose half of our minds.
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(Laughter)
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We literally lose half of our minds.
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"How does that feel?"
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"Unfamiliar, unfamiliar. I used to know all this stuff, it isn't there anymore.
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I used to be interested in these things, I used to look like something.
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I used to hang out with them, now I am hanging out with this".
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And then on top of it, on top of it:
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"Oh, my gosh, unfamiliar, unfamiliar!"
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We are going to grow testosterone receptors
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on our amygdala.
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And when that comes: aggression!
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I feel a little aggressive.
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(Laughter)
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There are biological reasons for the teenage years.
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There is biology underlying everything you're feeling,
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everything you're thinking, and everything you are experiencing.
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The last portion of the brain to come totally aligned,
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is the prefrontal cortex.
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The prefrontal cortex is responsible for things
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including our ability to plan ahead.
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It's our impulse control.
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It's our ability to understand the consequences of our behavior.
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It's the appropriateness of our behavior.
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So when our parents are looking at us,
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and we are bigger than they are,
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and it's all unfamiliar for everyone in the house,
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what's going on?
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I haven't reattached my prefrontal cortex yet.
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There is a biological reason.
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The beauty, the wonderful thing about the teenage years,
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is you have literally lost half your mind.
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Which half have you kept? The one that you are going to use.
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You are going to walk, to talk, to socialize, to do these things.
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My best advice to any teenager,
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is whatever you are good at when you were young,
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that you want to do in your 20s, 40s and 80s,
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do it throughout your teenage years.
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The teenage years is the time for you to tend the garden of your mind.
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It's your opportunity for you to pick and choose
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who and how you want to be when you get older.
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We technically become biological adults at the age of 25.
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It's when the long bones in our body stop growing long.
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We are adults, development is over, and the brain is now established.
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My advice to all parents is keep them alive till 25.
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(Laughter)
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Keep your kids alive till they are 25.
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And to all of you teenagers, keep them alive until 25;
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nurture the beautiful cells inside your brain until you are 25,
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and then you will have this gorgeous adult brain
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then you get to figure out what you want to do with, later.
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So bottom line here, we are feeling creatures who think.
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We are feeling creatures who think.
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Living in a left brain dominant society,
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where we value what we think over what we feel,