Inventing Ourselves

Our personalities, aspirations and dreams are all established in our brains. It creates every feeling, emotion and desire we experience, and stores every one of our memories. And yet, until very recently, we believed that it stopped developing in childhood; that by the time you reached adolescence, your brain was fully developed. In Inventing Ourselves, award-winning neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore reveals that this is simply not the case.

There are fundamental differences between the adult and adolescent brain, and typical teenage behaviour – risk taking, intense relationships, going to bed and getting up late – is caused by the transformations that take place during this formative period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these physiological changes are most evident in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for decision-making, planning, inhibiting inappropriate behaviour, evaluating risk and understanding others.

While working in a psychiatric hospital in Versailles, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore was struck by the realisation that every patient first experienced symptoms during this pivotal period. Why is this? What happens to our brains during our teenage years? And what makes adolescent brains particularly vulnerable to illnesses such as schizophrenia?

With implications for education, parenting and treating mental health conditions, Inventing Ourselves will transform the way we think about adolescence and reveal that the changes we experience throughout our teenage years dictate the adults we become.