--- Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <extensive snippage> > Most societies > agree than 5 year olds can't consent to complicated > social activities, > and 21 year olds can. The exact age of consent for > different activities > and different cultures and different people varies > quite a bit. Best > possible world -- a determination would be made on a > case-by-case > basis whether a "child" was able to consent to > certain activities > based on the child's development and the activity. > But we aren't that > sophisticated yet, so in America we just choose 18 > for sex and that's > it. Is it a belief? Probably, but most people > recognize it as a belief of convenience...
I remembered reading somewhere that prefrontal lobe functions (involving judgement and impulse control among others) continued to evolve/improve up to age 21, lending weight to that as the 'proper age of majority.' But it looks like some interneuronal connections continue to evolve into ones' 40's: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11343525&dopt=Abstract "...Secondary analyses indicated that white matter volume increased until age 44 years for the frontal lobes and age 47 years for the temporal lobes and then declined. CONCLUSIONS: The changes in white matter suggest that the adult brain is in a constant state of change roughly defined as periods of maturation continuing into the fifth decade of life followed by degeneration. Pathological states that interfere with such maturational processes could result in neurodevelopmental arrests in adulthood." Maturation of frontal lobe gray matter does occur in early adulthood: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/teenbrain.cfm "...While this work suggests a wave of brain white matter development that flows from front to back, animal, functional brain imaging and postmortem studies have suggested that gray matter maturation flows in the opposite direction, with the frontal lobes not fully maturing until young adulthood. To confirm this in living humans, the UCLA researchers compared MRI scans of young adults, 23-30, with those of teens, 12-16.4 They looked for signs of myelin, which would imply more mature, efficient connections, within gray matter. As expected, areas of the frontal lobe showed the largest differences between young adults and teens. This increased myelination in the adult frontal cortex likely relates to the maturation of cognitive processing and other "executive" functions. Parietal and temporal areas mediating spatial, sensory, auditory and language functions appeared largely mature in the teen brain. The observed late maturation of the frontal lobe conspicuously coincides with the typical age-of-onset of schizophrenia�late teens, early twenties�which, as noted earlier, is characterized by impaired "executive" functioning..." [Any parents of teens might want to read this short article on teenagers' brain/emotional changes.] Debbi who wonders what it might mean that she didn't really feel like an adult until ~ 32yo... ;} __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
