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Adolescence is inadequate + Justifying killing + Wired for learning new languages

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Adolescence is no longer a bridge between childhood and adult life
https://aeon.co/essays/adolescence-is-no...adult-life

EXCERPT: [...] With the concept of adolescence, American parents, especially those in the middle class, could predict the staging of their children’s maturation. But adolescence soon became a vision of normal development that was applicable to all youth – its bridging character (connecting childhood and adulthood) giving young Americans a structured way to prepare for mating and work. In the 21st century, the bridge is sagging at both ends as the innocence of childhood has become more difficult to protect, and adulthood is long delayed. While adolescence once helped frame many matters regarding the teen years, it is no longer an adequate way to understand what is happening to the youth population. And it no longer offers a roadmap for how they can be expected to mature....



How video games unwittingly train the brain to justify killing
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-video-games-un...fy-killing

EXCERPT: [...] How can an otherwise normal person override the moral code and commit cold-blooded murder? That was the question asked at the University of Queensland in Australia, in a study led by the neuroscientist Pascal Molenberghs, in which participants entered an fMRI scanner while viewing a first-person video game. In one scenario, a soldier kills an enemy soldier; in another, the soldier kills a civilian. The game enabled each participant to privately enter the mind of the soldier and control which person to execute.

The results were, overall, surprising. It made sense that a mental simulation of killing an innocent person (unjustified kill) led to overwhelming feelings of guilt and subsequent activation of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), an area of the brain involved in aversive, morally sensitive situations. By contrast, researchers predicted that viewing a soldier killing a soldier would create activity in another region of the brain, the medial OFC, which assesses thorny ethical situations and assigns them positive feelings such as praise and pride: ‘This makes me feel good, I should keep doing it.’

But that is not what occurred: the medial OFC did not light up when participants imagined themselves as soldiers killing the enemy. In fact, none of the OFC did. One explanation for this puzzling finding is that the OFC’s reasoning ability isn’t needed in this scenario because the action is not ethically compromising. That is to say – it is seen as justified. Which brings us to a chilling conclusion: if killing feels justified, anyone is capable of committing the act....



Some people really are wired better for learning languages
https://aeon.co/ideas/some-people-really...-languages

EXCERPT: [...] Most recently, I was excited to find that neuroscientist Xiaoqian Chai and her colleagues at McGill University in Montreal have been using resting-state fMRI (a technique that measures brain activity by tracking oxygen flow while a person is awake but not doing a task) to investigate exactly this question. Looking at students in an intensive 12-week French immersion course, they found large individual differences in language improvement....
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