Description

BJ Casey, PhD, is the Christina L. Williams Professor of Neuroscience at Barnard College - Columbia University and a member of The Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. She was one of the first to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the developing human brain, particularly during adolescence, accelerating the emergence of the field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. Her scientific discoveries have been published in ~ 250 articles in top-tier journals, including Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, and The Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, cited over 81,500 times and highlighted by NPR, PBS, NY Times, and National Geographic. She has received lifetime achievement awards for her research and mentoring from the Society for Neuroscience, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, and she is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Casey has served on scientific advisory boards and panels, including the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Board of Scientific Counselors and the NIMH Advisory Council, the National Research Council (NCR) Board of Children, Youth, and Families, and NCR committees on Assessing Juvenile Justice Reform and The Science of Adolescent Risk Taking. Her work has been cited in amicus briefs presented to the U.S. Supreme Court on the sentencing of young offenders, and she has presented her work to congressional staff on Capitol Hill, state supreme courts, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and federal judges on the adolescent brain.

Abstract

The adolescent brain has been characterized as a defective car, with no brakes or steering wheel—only an accelerator. This characterization has been used to explain the impulsive and risky behavior of this transient developmental period. But why do adolescents respond to the world the way they do? In this lecture, I will consider adolescent-specific changes in the brain and behavior from a developmental evolutionary viewpoint, in how they might be adaptive. I’ll suggest ways in which the adolescent brain has evolved to explore and learn from new and changing environments as the adolescent gains independence from the caregiver and transitions into an adult. I’ll highlight adolescent-specific changes in the brain and behavior in response to emotional and social information that may facilitate learning to independently secure resources (e.g., food, water, and shelter) and to establish new social bonds beyond the family for their own future survival.