Risk-Taking and Your Brain

Research in Cognitive Psychology Explains Benefits of Risk-Taking | Carnegie Mellon Today

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Explain three things you learned from the TED Talk “How Risk-taking Changes a Teenager’s Brain”.

9 Responses

  1. Raegan says:

    – The teenage brain is still maturing and growing, and multiple factors contribute to teenager’s decision to part-take in risky and dangerous behavior, like trying drugs. Many parents fail to understand all of these factors, even though they may have experienced the same behavior earlier in their lives, and are unable to comprehend how an academically intelligent child is able to make rash decisions and have an incredible lack of judgement.

    -Through researching on her own classmates, Kashfia Rahman found that habituation, or the diminished response to a stimulant as exposure increases, plays a key role in why teenagers take risks more often than adults or children. As the teenagers in the experiments repeated the computer-simulated decision making simulator, their habituation grew, and they began making more and more risky decisions as well as didn’t experience the same level of stress or fear they once did when they had first completed it.

    -The reason children don’t take the same or as many risks as teenagers is because of the lack of exposure they face to the same risks teens are put through, and subsequently get used to. So, although the teenage brain is more developed than that of a child’s, the teenage brain has to deal not only with changes in the brain structure as they mature, but also the risk of habituation to risky events, like the choice to try drugs or alcohol.

  2. Raegan says:

    – The teenage brain is still maturing and growing, and multiple factors contribute to teenager’s decision to part-take in risky and dangerous behavior, like trying drugs. Many parents fail to understand all of these factors, even though they may have experienced the same behavior earlier in their lives, and are unable to comprehend how an academically intelligent child is able to make rash decisions and have an incredible lack of judgement.

    -Through researching on her own classmates, Kashfia Rahman found that habituation, or the diminished response to a stimulant as exposure increases, plays a key role in why teenagers take risks more often than adults or children. As the teenagers in the experiments repeated the computer-simulated decision making simulator, their habituation grew, and they began making more and more risky decisions as well as didn’t experience the same level of stress or fear they once did when they had first completed it.

    -The reason children don’t take the same or as many risks as teenagers is because of the lack of exposure they face to the same risks teens are put through, and subsequently get used to. So, although the teenage brain is more developed than that of a child’s, the teenage brain has to deal not only with changes in the brain structure as they mature, but also the risk of habituation to risky events, like the choice to try drugs or alcohol.

  3. sami says:

    -teenagers brain is still growing, which has a factor in decisions and risky behavior.
    -Habituation increases teenagers taking more risks. When the students kept retaking the test they didn’t have as much stress and their made more risky decisions.
    -the immature brain and impact of habituation create more damaging effects on risk taking and other decisions.

  4. Ally says:

    Three things I learned in this video is that it is not just our small town (although sometimes it feels like it) that has limited school programs and opportunities that prevent students that are invested in furthering their knowledge in an area but cannot do so. Kashfia in the video had to save up to purchase the EEG which at that was a difficult task. Whereas schools that are more advanced and receive more funding are able to provide those programs to their students. I also never knew that an EEG machine could just be purchased outside of a medical setting, I always equated it with exclusively hospitals. Lastly, habituation lessens a response to a stimulus with repeated exposure which Kashfia examined in her research.

  5. kenyon says:

    three things I learned in the ted talk was that being in such a small town you can still do large things that can change the way you impact the world, the girl with a small school and not many things to work with still made it happen. I also learned the more a person is exposed to things that are considered a risk the more the times they will repeat. when students put on the headset and did the test they’re emotions were high as they should be doing something risky and as they continued to do it over and over the emotions like guilty decreased.

  6. shayde says:

    The brain it self gets unhealthy with you play video games and it can damage the brain. The second thing is that if you take certain drugs your brain can be damaged more severely. The last thing about the brain the drugs you take that can damage the brain cam control your actions

  7. Kaid says:

    Being in a smaller community does not mean you can’t do big things, the brain controls literally everything about you, and the teen brain is far from being matured

  8. Kyleisha says:

    Some things that I have learned from this TED talk was that the teen brain from age 13-18 takes more risk than an average adult. The teen brain being that it is still developing means that they will most likely make poor decisions, falling into risky behaviors. Habituation explains how our brains adapt to some behaviors, like lying. The EEG headset allowed Kashfia Rahman to measure teenager risking behaviors compared to the ones in the real world, like drug use or gambling. Stress and anxiety led mood to decrease and made them less happy, therefore made their want to take a risk higher, it is like a inverse relationship.

  9. vinny says:

    -teens take more risks in their developing years of the brain
    -children brains are less developed because they haven’t had the experiences or take the risks as a teenager would.
    -the brain is still developing and maturing

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