The Biology of Risk Taking

Teenagers.  Invincible, reckless, impulsive, selfish.  Many times adults, the media, and society stereotype teens negatively.  When given the wrong set of circumstances, teens can definitely find themselves in bad situations, and perhaps in jail or dead.  It is possible for teens to engage of risky behaviours such as drunk driving, unprotected sex or elicit drugs.  The emotional limbic system develops later in teens than the rational prefrontal cortex.  The limbic system includes the nucleus accumbens which is involved in sexual arousal and is the target of recreational drugs as well as the amygdala which is involved in selecting appropriate responses to stimuli as well as the evaluation of faces.  On the other hand, the prefrontal cortex controls motivation, impulse, thinking, problem solving, and the ability to time travel.  The dopamine produced by the VTA in the limbic system is part of the reward system and teens crave the pleasurable experiences that it produces.

Teens are generally self conscious and some have low self esteem.  They enjoy taking risks but only in safe environments.  An educator or adult who has a fully developed pre-frontal cortex can provide that structured, safe environment.  It’s important that students feel as if their ideas are valued and they are included but not necessarily single out, in a group poll, for example.  In these environments, teens full of passion can use their impulse to take risks to become involved in collaborative inquiry based learning to develop solutions to open ended problems.  These teens are the future and we, as educators, have a responsibility to encourage them to take risks, make mistakes, and learn to solve the big problems in the world.