An expensive and complicated journey: Bringing a new drug to market is one of the most difficult propositions in science — partly because so much of the process takes place outside the lab. Dr. Bhide discusses his experience with commercializing research discoveries.   Read More...

Dr. Pradeep Bhide, director of the Center for Brain Repair at the FSU College of Medicine, received a FSU GAP award to develop a new, non-stimulant drug to treat cognitive inflexibility. Cognitive inflexibility hampers a child’s ability to learn by making it difficult to switch between thinking about one concept to another or multiple concepts simultaneously. Aspects of cognitive inflexibility are found in autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactive disorder. It affects roughly 25 million people, but no drug has been developed specifically to treat this condition.

Repeat after me: Mental illness is physical

If you've ever tried to warn teenagers of the consequences of risky behavior — only to have them sigh and roll their eyes — don't blame them.

Blame their brain anatomy.

Sociologists and psychologists have long known that teen brains are predisposed to downplay risk, act impulsively and be undaunted by the threat of punishment. But now scientists are beginning to understand why.

"I think teenage behavior is probably the most misunderstood of any age group — not only by parents but by teenagers themselves," says Pradeep Bhide, a Florida State University College of Medicine neuroscientist and director of the Center for Brain Repair.

"It's a critical time in life, and a very stressful one, when they are going through so many changes at the same time that their brains are changing. The teen years are actually a very busy time for brain development."

During the past year, Bhide brought together some of the world's foremost brain researchers in a quest to explain why teenagers — and male teens in particular — often behave erratically. He and two Cornell University colleagues examined 20 of the leading research projects from brain experts around the world and recently published their findings in a special volume of the scientific journal Developmental Neuroscience.

What they found surprised them — not so much because of the behavior uncovered, but because of how much of it was explained by brain development, or lack thereof.

Unlike children or adults, for instance, teenage boys show enhanced activity in the part of the brain responsible for emotions when confronted with a threat, making the threat more difficult to ignore. In one study, even when the teens were specifically told not to respond to a threat, many could not stop themselves. Magnetic-resonance-scanner readings revealed their brain activity was strikingly different from that in adult men.

In the past decade, Bhide says, technological advances in such imaging have shed new light on what goes on inside our heads. Now researchers essentially can watch an individual's brain in action as it responds to various stimuli.

"This field has exploded," he says. "Psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, neuroscientists, criminal-justice professionals and parents are engaged in a daily struggle to understand and solve the enigma of teenage risky behaviors," Bhide said. "Such behaviors impact not only the teenagers who obviously put themselves at serious and lasting risk, but also families and societies in general."

Soldiers and first responders — as well as terrorists — are often teenage males and young men willing to put themselves in harm's way.

From an evolutionary standpoint, some theorize, such risk-taking may have been necessary to hunt, fend off danger or even compete for a mate.

"If you compare the same person as a teenager and then later as an adult, they will still tend to be more impulsive as a teenager," Bhide says. "And different parts of the brain develop on a different timetable."

All species that humans have studied begin their existence with a period of rapid brain development. For humans, brain growth inside the womb and during the first three years of life occurs at a phenomenal rate in both overall brain size and the number of pathways developed.

But as people get older, some of those pathways sort of fall by the wayside while others become major thoroughfares. The teen years, Bhide says, are an especially busy time for that process.

"The body's hormones have a pretty big effect on the brain as well," Bhide says. "And of course it's different for females and males. But, for instance, schizophrenia and certain other mental disorders appear during this time for that reason."

Teen brains also may be more susceptible to lasting damage from drugs and alcohol ingested during that brain-remodeling process — although Bhide says researchers are still looking at that issue. "What we do know is that the damage is different."

Regardless, few of us will be the same person at 47 that we were at 17, a fact you may find comforting.

"I'm always reminded of a quote from Mark Twain," Bhide says. "'When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned.'"

It’s common knowledge that teenage boys seem predisposed to risky behaviors. Now, a series of new studies is shedding light on specific brain mechanisms that help to explain what might be going on inside juvenile male brains.

Florida State University College of Medicine neuroscientist Pradeep Bhide brought together some of the world’s foremost researchers in a quest to explain why teenagers — boys, in particular — often behave erratically.

The result is a series of 19 studies that approached the question from multiple scientific domains, including psychology, neurochemistry, brain imaging, clinical neuroscience and neurobiology. The studies are published in a special volume of Developmental Neuroscience, “Teenage Brains: Think Different?”

“Psychologists, psychiatrists, educators, neuroscientists, criminal justice professionals and parents are engaged in a daily struggle to understand and solve the enigma of teenage risky behaviors,” Bhide said. “Such behaviors impact not only the teenagers who obviously put themselves at serious and lasting risk but also families and societies in general.

“The emotional and economic burdens of such behaviors are quite huge. The research described in this book offers clues to what may cause such maladaptive behaviors and how one may be able to devise methods of countering, avoiding or modifying these behaviors.”

An example of findings published in the book that provide new insights about the inner workings of a teenage boy’s brain:

Unlike children or adults, teenage boys show enhanced activity in the part of the brain that controls emotions when confronted with a threat. Magnetic resonance scanner readings in one study revealed that the level of activity in the limbic brain of adolescent males reacting to threat, even when they’ve been told not to respond to it, was strikingly different from that in adult men.

Using brain activity measurements, another team of researchers found that teenage boys were mostly immune to the threat of punishment but hypersensitive to the possibility of large gains from gambling. The results question the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrent for risky or deviant behavior in adolescent boys.

Another study demonstrated that a molecule known to be vital in developing fear of dangerous situations is less active in adolescent male brains. These findings point toward neurochemical differences between teenage and adult brains, which may underlie the complex behaviors exhibited by teenagers.

“The new studies illustrate the neurobiological basis of some of the more unusual but well-known behaviors exhibited by our teenagers,” Bhide said. “Stress, hormonal changes, complexities of psycho-social environment and peer-pressure all contribute to the challenges of assimilation faced by teenagers.

“These studies attempt to isolate, examine and understand some of these potential causes of a teenager’s complex conundrum. The research sheds light on how we may be able to better interact with teenagers at home or outside the home, how to design educational strategies and how best to treat or modify a teenager’s maladaptive behavior.”

FSU plays host to the inaugural Florida Brain Symposium. The two-day event featured neuroscientists from around the state, sharing their studies dealing with brain injuries and better ways to fight against diseases such as alzheimer’s and dementia.

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Perhaps the most talked-about presenter at the recent Florida Brain Project Symposium was not a brain researcher at all, but a Tallahassee patient.

The keynote speaker was Sandy Halperin — a retired assistant professor at Harvard’s dental school who, since being diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease four years ago, has become a national advocate for accelerated research on dementia. He alternately praised the researchers for their work, pounded the lectern out of frustration with a slow-moving Congress and, as if to remind his audience of the enemy they’re pursuing, apologized occasionally for losing his train of thought.

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