The Effects of Stress and Depression on the Adolescent Brain
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.1043Keywords:
Stress, Depression, Adolescent BrainAbstract
Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to deteriorating mental health due to greater brain plasticity and being in a developmental phase. Brain plasticity involves the brain’s capacity to adapt to experiences and environmental factors. There is evidence suggesting that the adolescent brain is particularly susceptible to environmental stress and risky behaviors. This paper will investigate a connection between the cognitive changes that accompany deterioration in mental health and those that accompany excessive stress in adolescents. Studying the neural responses in adolescent brains can give us important insight into the effects of stress and mental health on individuals and how the neural responses themselves contribute to driving this behavior. Here, I will explore the activity in several brain regions related to reward, loss, and cognitive control, all of which can be altered due to acute stress and depression in adolescents. Knowledge about the changes that the adolescent brain goes through during stress and depression and their similarities can help us find possible markers of depression.1 The goal of this paper is to express the effects of stress and depression on the adolescent brain and propose further research in a direction that can help the adolescents of the world.
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