I state the obvious here to preemptively respond the claims of some non-neuroscientists that the notion of “the adolescent brain” is some sort of myth (Epstein, 2007; Males, 2009). As this collection of papers makes eminently clear, the fact that there are significant changes in the brain during adolescence is no longer debatable - if indeed it ever was. Indeed, it appears that the brain changes characteristic of adolescence are among the most dramatic and important to occur during the human lifespan. Whether neurobiological differences between adolescents and adults should inform how society treats young people is open for debate, but whether such differences are real is not (Steinberg, 2009).
