What an age we live in. Science is progressing in ever greater leaps and bounds. The way things are going, we might one day even understand that most enigmatic and mysterious of natural phenomena, the teenager.
"If youth knew; if age could." Such was the lament of the French publisher Henri Estienne in the 16th century. But youth doesn't know and age can't: Such is the tragedy, as Estienne saw it, of human life. Young people don't know -- but good luck to them. It is the prerogative of the young to be different and inscrutable to their elders.
And now we know why. A 10-year study of people ages 4 to 21 has revealed that the higher centers of the brain -- those involved in reasoning and problem solving -- are among the last to mature. The prefrontal cortex, the site of the higher centers, is the last to come "on line." It might explain why some teenagers lack the ability to be reasonable (though it doesn't explain why the same is true of many adults).