Today’s teenagers have been stereotyped as adventurous and harebrained individuals.  They are generally fond of experimenting with things until they get in touch with drugs, sex, guns, alcohol among others. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, 16,000 young adults die each year from unintentional injuries and accidents.  The most common justification for teenagers’ care-free attitude is that their brains just aren’t developed enough to know better. However, recent research shows that in some cases the fact is just the opposite, the brain matures not too slowly but perhaps, too quickly.

According to a psychiatrist, an adolescent who engages in more dangerous activities have white-matter pathways that seem to be more mature than those of risk-averse youths.  White-matter is the brain’s wiring, the neutral pathways that connect the various gray-matter regions of the cerebrum that are independent of one another.  Having a mature white-matter is necessary because it allows faster brain processing speed.  Nerve impulses also travel faster in mature white-matter. Experiments also reveal that the more mature the look of the brain, the more adventurous the teenager tended to be.
Another possible explanation is that some teenagers whose brains develop more rapidly than others become uncomfortable and a little confused owing to the gap between their biological capabilities and the social norms they must follow as kids. Precocious development of these neural tracts may make some adolescents more susceptible to engage in behaviors that society considers too adult in nature for their chronological age. It is also a common notion that teens make dumb decisions because their brains are immature. In other words, having a more mature brain may actually motivate some teens to try out new and potentially harmful experiences.
For now, these theories are mere speculation, and the researchers concede that the interaction of white and gray matter is so complex that hard conclusions remain elusive. The results of the study are relatively bare and by no means conclusive. The human brain is so intricate in nature, and one has to consider the fact that there are other factors that come into play such as the environment and certain genetic predispositions that are equally complex to study.

Have you ever observed someone before, I mean just watch them from a distance, that has a tic? A twitch of some sort or maybe someone who winks a lot or makes odd facial expressions that seem weird or inappropriate? I have seen a couple of people do that and I find it interesting and somewhat annoying and distracting. As with any annoying thing/quirk I have ever encountered, it prompted me to ask questions and get some information about it before being judgmental about it.

It turns out, based on some first hand questioning, that these quirky annoying tics are not at all directed at anyone in particular and are not even voluntary. I have asked 4 people that have these twitches what it was about and they all told me that it was a disorder called Tourette’s Syndrome. I would have asked them more questions about it but the constant grimace, nose twitch and blinking is very distracting, so I did what a normal curious person would do, look it up on the net.

The first thing I looked for is whether it was contagious or infectious, just to be sure that I wouldn’t end up having it, good thing it isn’t. After I got that out of the way, it was time to know more about that mysterious twitch.

Tourette’s Syndrome according to wikipedia is “an inherited neurological disorder with onset in childhood, characterized by the presence of multiple physical (motor) tics and at least one vocal (phonic) tic”. It means that the twitches and winks start out early on and would probably become more complicated as a child matures, it can eventually involve movement on the entire body. There are also cases of vocalizations like grunts, barks and other weird noises, I haven’t met anyone who does that but it would probably be an interesting conversation specially if they have coprophalia ( the involuntary use of obscene words ) or echolalia otherwise known as mocking, although it’s involuntary and probably not meant to hurt or offend people, it can still be a pretty shocking experience.