Your Brain is Still a Teenager? Doctor Explains

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Adulthood starts at 32, 32.

[00:00:04]32.

[00:00:05]Yeah, the teenage brain might carry on for a little bit longer than we thought.

[00:00:09]I'm Dr. Saramath, let's look at the fact. What researchers did at the University of Cambridge was look at MRI diffusion scans, which is how water moves through the brain of 3,802 people from 0 to 90 years old. They found a five distinct brain phase and the largest turning point is from [music] teenage years to adulthood. But before those is the childhood brain from 0 to 9 where there's rapid expansion of the gray and white matter and the large number of synapses that are there during infancy are being pruned based on which ones are not getting used. [music] Then the teenage brain where there's continued expansion of the insulation, the white matter of the brain and increased connectivity linked to increased cognitive performance, which seems to [music] go from age 9 to around age 32. At that point the brain seems to peak in intelligence and personality and there are no major changes after this point as it mainly focuses on compartmentalizing and segregating [music] itself. This is the longest of all the stages lasting around three decades and to me it shows just how important it is to have exposure to a wide variety of things [music] when you are younger then be able to specialize and hone down as we get older. But how does this all match to your experience?