Why teenagers are moody - scientists have found the answer from the UK Telegraph reports that rather than hormones kicking in, it is the fact that brains grow slower than the body during the teen years, according to Jay Gledd who heads a research team at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
They found that adolescence brings waves of so-called 'brain pruning' during which children lose about one per cent of their grey matter every year until their early 20s.
This reduction trims unused neural connections that were overproduced in the childhood growth spurt, starting with the more basic sensory and motor areas of the brain.
These mature first, followed by the regions involved in language and spatial awareness and then finally those involved in more cerebral functions.
Among the last to mature is the very front of the brain's frontal lobe, which is involved in control of impulses, judgement and decision-making, which scientists say might explain some of the bizarre decisions made by the average teenager.
This area also controls and processes emotional information sent from the amygdala - the fight or flight centre of gut reactions - which may account for the short-tempers among some teenagers.
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