Did you know that the statement "brain doesn't fully develop until 25"is a myth?

[Chargirllll]

Some people use the brain development method religiously to infsntalise adults when they don't realise it's false and can't be proven to be true. Some sources say brain isn't developed until 30 or later.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development

[OneViewpoint]

In medieval times life expectancy in Europe was 30-35 years. Children were treated as "adults" at puberty or around age 13. They were married off or put to work earning a living. That was deemed acceptable by that society living in that reality. If you were gonna have kids you better be doing it as soon as you're able because you'll likely be dead in 15 - 20 years.

Fast forward to the 21st century and the average lifespan in the USA is 77.43 years. Accordingly we have raised the bar for "adulthood" at 18 years. You have completed your basic education, you can vote, you can enter into a contract, you can work and earn a living. That is deemed acceptable by our current society.

Do people's brains get constructed like a car? No. Is our development ever complete? Well, some of us continue to grow and learn for a lifetime. Others may struggle a lot longer to reach even basic levels of social IQ or technical knowledge.

But we can't legislate that point for every person because it's unique for every person. So we pick a number. We picked 18. Does it work for every dumbass? No. But it works OK for most of us. Is 21 the right number? 25? 30? Where does society draw the line? Can we save every dumbass from being a dumbass? No. Sometimes some people need to learn the hard way. Life teaches them. Or they fail.

[Shiprex]

It was never really a thing just someones opinion who published it and then it began to get used in the gender spat to denigrate men who are older who seek to date younger women instead of the older women who think they should be "dating people their own age" like they're still in school.
Brain function may start to deteriorate at any age and can continue to "develop" new neural pathways all through life. Sure when it's younger it may develop faster but it never stops developing.

The key thing is "brain development" was conflated with maturity and life stages and goals which are an attempt to create some kind of science of maturity and use it to place values on people's motives. Toxicity in a nutshell.

[LazerBean]

Technically humans don't stop developing until we die. But that doesn't mean there's not a very distinct difference between a 20 year old and a 30 year old. Same goes for a 20 year old brain and a 30 year old brain.

[Chargirllll]

Yeah but it has nothing to do with brain development

[Chargirllll]

Maybe it does, but not to the extent people think

[supercutebutt]

Yup. It's total BS. Donald Trump is like 100 and we are still waiting for his brain to develop. Sad. :(

[adventurous-1]

Actually the brain starts to loose mass after the age range between 30 and 40 and progressing more rapidly after 60. The brain continues to develop and mature throughout life but most of it structure occurred during adolescence or so I have read.

[abc3643]

I don't know... In my experience and in those of plenty of other people, 25 is more or less a magic number when you actually start functioning somewhat like an adult and can't believe how immature your were just a few years previously.

[Chargirllll]

It depends on the person, there is no magic number. Science has proven this theory wrong

[abc3643]

There is no magic number, of course, but that's more or less what it is.

It's no different than growing up. Each of us who is normally healthy (and not suffering from acromegaly or gigantism) will reach an age where we have bone fusion and we stop growing. That's around 18 which is one reason why 18 is often considered legal adulthood for the most part. From a structural point of view, the body is adult around 18. But it isn't magically 18, just a number around there.

As far as the brain is concerned, I can't say anything definitive, just that, by around 25, you more or less have this mental mindset that "I am an adult now and need to start to act like one" and so the immaturity of youth begins to wane away.

[abc3643]

This is a reason why, if I was young again, I would not consider dating a female younger than 25.

[Chargirllll]

But that's just your opinion, it's not a fact that you are an adult at 25.

Science has proven that myth wrong, in fact science claims that your brain is developing into your thirties before it is fully developed.

You can have your opinion, but don't speak like it's a fact.

[Chargirllll]

Neuroscience has shown that 18 year olds can think for themselves and tackle complex problems and be put in difficult situations and handle it fine.

18 is adult and that's the official adult age.

[abc3643]

Apparently, 1) you didn't understand what I wrote and 2) I was more or less defending you.

All I am saying is that, by around 25, you have your shit together. That's not exactly scientifically measureable very well, but, to anyone who significantly older than 25, it's more or less intuitive. It's perhaps a reason why the Founding Fathers made the minimum age to be a Representative in the House of Representatives be 25. The House isn't as important as the Senate, so they made the Senate minimum age be 30. And they made the minimum age to be President be 35. All for reasons of experience and maturity and, from a biological perspective, "brain maturity" even though they would not have thought of it like that.

[Chargirllll]

This is all very subjective. How can you speak on behalf of most people on when they consider themselves to have their shit together or about what their intuitive is? Where is your evidence?

You are old enough for different things, for example, you need experience for presidency, this has nothing to do with brain development, but life expectancy of when the age was set. Different countries have different rules for age of president too. That wasn't a good example.

[abc3643]

This may help. It comes from the National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, part of the US Federal Government.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3621648/

Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2013 Apr 3;9:449–461. doi: 10.2147/NDT. S39776
Maturation of the adolescent brain
Mariam Arain
Maliha Haque
Lina Johal
Puja Mathur
Wynand Nel
Afsha Rais
Ranbir Sandhu
Sushil Sharma
Saint James School of Medicine,
Kralendijk, Bonaire, The Netherlands

You can read the original here also at that peer-reviewed journal's (*) website.
https://www.dovepress.com/article/download/12651

========
That journal is:

Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment
An international, peer-reviewed journal of clinical therapeutics and pharmacology focusing on concise rapid reporting of clinical or pre-clinical studies on a range of neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders.

This journal is a member of and subscribes to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
www.dovepress.com/neuropsychiatric-disease-and-treatment-journal

[Chargirllll]

That's fine, but then it's scientists arguing with scientists. In the end, it's all a matter of opinion in what we believe in.

[abc3643]

No, it's not a matter of opinion.
Nature doesn't work that way.

"You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts."

Refereed papers mean that others have reviewed the work; it doesn't get published until it's been reviewed and the referees approve the science.

But, like you said, that doesn't mean that 25 is a magic number, but it is more or less a milestone age in brain development. And all that science has done is back up intuition that anyone significantly older than 25 understands.

[Chargirllll]

Doesn't really matter if other people agree with it.

I can show you studies where people say your brain develops in their 30s made by scientists too.

It doesn't change anything, the milestone varies from person to person.

[abc3643]

OK, show me those studies. They better come from peer-reviewed, refereed journals because that's how science is done.

[Chargirllll]

If you actually read the article I posted, the scientist uses several academic journals to back himself up, and debunks the methods other scientists use.

[Chargirllll]

Here several scientists agree that nothing special happens at 25 and talk about how the 25 myth originated. There is no evidence that anything happens at 25

slate.com/.../...ment-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

[Chargirllll]

One of those people is a very respectable scientist in adolescent psychology, so that speaks a lot.

[abc3643]

OK I will. I looked cursorily before but will look more deeply.

[Chargirllll]

Lol you don't have to.

I have enough evidence to feel confident in my views.

[abc3643]

I am puzzled by this guy's article. It's a bit lean on science and, if anything, he's contradicting himself a bit.

Of the links he's used, only one is truly relevant and one other is somewhat relevant and neither help his assertion at all.

First, this:
"(SUBTITLE) There’s no real evidence for the ‘age 25’ claim
Despite its prevalence, there’s no actual data set or specific study that can be invoked or pointed at as the obvious source of the claim that ‘the human brain stops developing at age 25’."

Well, there is real evidence as pointed to in the paper I included.

Now to his linked sources...

The most relevant one is this:
"‘(SUBTITLE) Developing’ does not mean ‘non-functioning’
Just because age 25 isn’t some firm endpoint for development, it doesn’t mean the brain isn’t developing before then. Because it is. It’s developing after that age too, in many cases.

(more)

[abc3643]

Exactly when ‘developing’ and ‘maturation’ ends is tricky to pin down. The human is essentially an assemblage of many different regions, of varying degrees of complexity, [[maturing at different rates]]."

That [[link]] is to this paper:
TITLE: The developmental mismatch in structural brain maturation during adolescence
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24993606
However, that's only an abstract. Here's the whole paper and he should have linked to it:
discovery.ucl.ac.uk/.../Mills_2014_DevNeurosci.pdf

Its assertion, which I don't debate, is that different parts of the brain mature at different rates so the age of maturation for those different parts is different. Nobody should debate that. This paper was concerned with adolescence though and it's key takeaways were that the amygdala matures before the prefontal cortex. As Google Gemini explains: "In essence, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for many of the complex cognitive processes that make us uniquely human."
https://gemini.google.com/share/bd619131d385
In a way, what the paper is explaining why teenagers are assholes.

Back to the original article you cited...
"But even if we focus on the frontal lobe, where all the reasoning and thinking occurs (mostly), it’s still very important to remember that brain development isn’t like the building of a house. You don't have to wait until all the walls and floors are done, the plumbing is sorted out and the electrics are installed before it can be used. Before you can actually live in it.
...
So it is with the human brain. Even if you believe that people under 25 aren’t ‘as good’ at decision-making as older people, it doesn’t mean they can’t do it, or shouldn’t be allowed to."

(more)

[abc3643]

Nobody is debating this. After all, we give suffrage to 18-year-olds and most other basic permissions by 21. I don't understand how this helps his case.

OK, I'm going down a rabbit hole with this...

In short, this article is trying to make the case that there are people who can be fully functional "mature thinking" adults before 25. I don't think anyone is debating that.

I think what is happening between you, me, and this author is that everyone is getting uptight about 25. For him, he's uptight about 25 being a magical minimum number for a variety of things which, collectively, he's asserting that, at 25, society says you can think adequately... be a mature thinker.

And, I think that's the real issue here... For legal reasons, any society DOES need to have a "magic number" age for a variety of things. He's right that 25 is a significant age in our society - that this is the age when we expect you to be a mature thinker.
And we use 25 in many ways (including the insurance industry and the Founding Fathers in the Constitution) because, by then, society assumes that you will have become a mature thinker by then. Could a person have been a mature thinker before that? Sure (although there's no substitute for experience.). But, short of testing every single person, it's easier to use ages in legislation and other rule-making endeavors. And we do that for all sorts of things...

So, put another way, the "myth" of the brain not being mature until 25 is actually irrelevant. For most people, that is around the time that occurs. Society needs to have a number. It's chosen 25 based not just on science but on hundreds of generations of human experience. Assuming you are truly 27 as your profile indicates, you may not intuitively understand that now, but you will by the time you are 50.

[Sunrising]

I've never thought about it, but I know now !

[Static_In_The_Attic]

A myth it could be but nowadays some people’s brains don’t even develop & some people are proof that evolution is moving in reverse.

[RedThread]

I still feel like I'm in my early 20s even though I'm 37 now. I get shocked when I look in the mirror and see gray hairs. My brain is frozen in development lol

[Chargirllll]

That's very weird considering you feel like a creep if you hooked up with a 21 year old. If you are mentally early 20s that would put you on par with them

[RedThread]

I was mostly joking which was the whole point of the "lol"
But mentality doesn't mean anything. If a young teen felt that they were mentally 40, does that make it okay for them to date someone that age?

[Chargirllll]

No lol but it's different with adults I guess

[exitseven]

Yes, I am way older than 25 and I don;t think it is developed yet.

[Chargirllll]

I agree about you

[exitseven]

😊😊😊😊😊😊

[Samuel75]

I don't know if it's a myth or not but at 25 someone should be able to think properly.

[Chargirllll]

Read the article

[Samuel75]

Yeah,
I did.

[just_a_potato]

My brain will never fully develop LMAO

[Chargirllll]

I agree

[just_a_potato]

I don't know why you're so bitter to the point where you follow me into a different question

[Chargirllll]

It's my question honey

[just_a_potato]

Which isn't the one we're debating in.

[Chargirllll]

I am not that discussion that question here.

I am replying to THIS question here, improve your reading comprehension

[just_a_potato]

You are replying this way because of our previous conversation, and you know it. I understand how you work a bit better now.

[Chargirllll]

Ohhh how smart you are. Well done little one!

[just_a_potato]

Don't patronize me... I'm assuming you aren't a girl's girl.

[Chargirllll]

I am 28, to me you are a kid.

I am nobody's girl.

[just_a_potato]

Interesting. Thank you for making it clear where I stand in your mind.

[onedarkcloud]

For some people, it never develops