Children, Compassion and the Brain II: Adolescence and the Prefrontal Cortex

While the panelists at The Scientific Basis for Compassion focused primarily on early childhood, they also addressed what neuroscience teaches us about compassion in adolescence, particularly the development of the prefrontal cortex.

In the last few years, scientists studying adolescent brain development have focused largely on the prefrontal cortex. During adolescence, and even into the early twenties, the prefrontal cortex is still developing significantly. This area, the furthest forward section of the frontal cortex (behind the forehead), plays a managing role in the brain. Among other things, it:

• moderates decision-making and social behavior
• controls risk assessment, remorse, and the ability to foresee outcomes of our actions
• helps us distinguish right from wrong
• guides the application of experiential learning.

Adolescents, in whom the prefrontal cortex is still developing, are for this reason sometimes stereotyped as impulsive risk-takers who make poor social decisions. As an advocate for youth leadership, I prefer to look at this stage of development in a positive light. That is, if brain development implies that youth are slightly less risk-averse than adults, they might have a capacity for innovation and new ideas that decreases with age. They might even have leadership or creative abilities that adults don't have.

The development of the prefrontal cortex also makes adolescence a critical stage for building compassion. The prefrontal cortex is strongly associated with an individual's personality traits, including kindness to others and social behavior. The ability to tell right from wrong and to assess risk are aspects of compassion; to be compassionate to another person, one has to see the consequences of not being compassionate, and to feel that lacking compassion would be wrong.

That adolescents have a capacity for compassion and an interest in justice isn't a surprise to anyone who has worked with youth on issues of social justice, service-learning, or inequality. Youth are often at the forefront of movements for social justice. Perhaps development of the prefrontal cortex puts issues like social injustice at, pardon the pun, the front of their minds.

Emotional or physical damage to the prefrontal cortex can be detrimental to our ability to feel compassion, since the prefrontal cortex also seems to play a role in our ability to express love for others. One of the panelists at The Scientific Basis for Compassion described the case of a previously compassionate mother who, after a car accident left her prefrontal cortex damaged, lost her ability to behave empathetically and lovingly to her children. She could no longer see how her actions affected them emotionally, making compassion difficult. While the damage in this case was physical, it's a reminder that physical or emotional damage during adolescence, such as family violence, discrimination, heavy drug use, or the withholding of compassion may stunt the healthy development of the prefrontal cortex, and thus the expression of compassion.

Just as the development of mirror neurons marks a critical time to help a baby develop compassion, so does the development of the prefrontal cortex mark a time to encourage the innate compassionate skills of youth. Through leadership and service opportunities, or anything else that promotes compassion, youth get to use their decision-making and risk-assessment skills, and to build habits of acting compassionately that will hopefully last into adulthood. This can happen if we treat adolescents with love and respect, nurture their interest in compassion, and give them decision-making and leadership opportunities that meet their own interests. It's also worth noting that some studies imply that play is essential for healthy development of the prefrontal cortex.

The Seeds of Compassion event focused primarily on youth, on helping children be compassionate, and on taking a cue from youth for the development of a more compassionate world. The part about taking a cue from youth is critical; they already have an interest in compassion. To bring it out, we have to be compassionate toward them ourselves, to give them opportunities to express their compassion, and to listen and learn from them.

Thanks to laura.ouimette for the Creative Commons photo.