Posted on 04/29/2022 at 8:14 p.m.,
Reading 2 mins.
Does your teenager not listen to you anymore? This unpleasant phenomenon would have a cerebral origin. Around the age of 13, the adolescent brain is no longer “conditioned” to listen to the maternal voice.
From birth, the infant’s brain is particularly receptive to the voice of its mother. He is not only able to recognize it among all, but in addition, it activates the areas of the brain dedicated to learning. In adolescence, things seem to go wrong according to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience. The brain of young people would indeed be more receptive to the voice of non-family members, such as strangers.
Teenage brain no longer registers mother’s voice
Teenagers might (finally) have a good reason not to listen to their mothers anymore. According to researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, this non-availability would be neurological.
To reach this conclusion, the scientists tested – using functional brain MRI and human sounds – the brains of children and adolescents aged 7 to 16. They then observed the cerebral modifications.
“While younger children showed increased activity in these brain systems for the mother’s voice compared to non-family voices, older adolescents showed the opposite effect with increased activity for the non-family voice compared to mother’s voice”report the researchers of the study.
Clearly, their brains no longer recorded, as before, the mother’s voice. Reward circuits and brain centers that prioritize stimuli were “woken” more by the unfamiliar voices than by those of their mothers.
“Fetuses in utero can recognize their mother’s voice before they are born, but in adolescents (…) their brain shifts away from it in favor of voices they have never heard”said Percy Mistry, co-lead author and researcher in psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
The voices of strangers activate their brain more
The researchers also found that, in adolescents, the voices of others elicited greater activation of several brain regions compared to younger children (the voice-selective superior temporal sulcus, the salience processing regions, and the posterior cingulate cortex).
In addition, brain responses to voices increased with adolescent age.
Previous tests had shown that certain regions of the brains of children aged 7 to 12 – in particular the parts involved in reward detection and attention – reacted more strongly to a mother’s voice than to a child’s voice. an unknown woman.
“In adolescence, it is therefore exactly the opposite.“, said Professor Daniel Abrams, before adding that “the transition from mother to mother seems to occur between the ages of 13 and 14″.
These results demonstrate that the processis rooted in neurobiological changes”, concluded one of the researchers. “When teens seem to rebel by not listening to their parents, it’s because they’re wired to pay more attention to the voices of strangers.”.
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