A new adulthood study claims there are four major “turning points” in a human being’s brain development. The four different ages of brain development are nine, thirty-two, sixty-six, and eighty-three. Hence, according to this study, humans can continue being adolescents until the age of thirty-two.
Report suggests adulthood arrives after 30
A new adulthood study claims that a person starts to function like an adult after thirty. Nature Communications published a detailed report after conducting extensive research. The study sampled 4,000 scans of the brains of a mixed age group of participants from childhood to people aged 90. (via Al Jazeera)
Researchers extensively studied the participants’ brain development and discovered that humans go through five “brain phases.” However, within those five “brain phases,” four are most significant as they develop, plateau, and decline.
The five different “brain phases” are childhood (birth to age nine), adolescence (nine to thirty-two), and adulthood (thirty-two to sixty-six). Finally, at sixty-six, an individual starts showing early signs of ageing, and at eighty-three, they enter late ageing.
An average human being’s intelligence and development peak at thirty-two and are considered the beginning of adulthood. After this, a person’s intelligence and development begin to stabilize.
Researchers have noted that several factors, like puberty, personality stabilisation, “reorganisation,” and decline, aid a human being’s brain phase development from one stage to another.
Unsurprisingly, a human being is the most active and at their best development in their childhood. Childhood is characterised by a lot of brain rewiring and rapid structural change. The brain rewiring and structural change begin to weaken as an individual ages and completely weaken by the time a human being hits eighty.
Interestingly, according to the research, an individual delays adulthood until the age of thirty-two. Between the ages of nine to thirty, the brain continues to mature and becomes more organised, resulting in greater efficiency.
According to the new study, adolescence begins with puberty and extends for a long period of time. The researchers revealed, “The transition to adulthood is influenced by cultural, historical, and social factors, making it context-dependent rather than a purely biological shift.”
However, one of the unfortunate limitations of the research is that the sample size only includes people living in the West and does not include people from other parts of the world.
