Criticism from Mother "Shuts Down" Teenager's Brain

A new research shows why teenagers do not respond well to nagging from their mothers.

The finding of the study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Universities of Pittsburgh, California-Berkeley and Harvard, has been revealed in the new paper: "Neural responses to maternal criticism in healthy youth".

The neuroscientists states that an adolescent's brain "shuts down" when he/she hears the mother criticizing them, The Courier Mail reports.

The study included 32 youngsters, 22 girls and 10 boys, whose average age was 14 years. They were put through a brain scanner. Then an audio clip of their mothers criticizing them was played.

"One thing that bothers me about you is that you get upset over minor issues. I could tell you to take your shoes from downstairs. You'll get mad that you have to pick them up and actually walk upstairs and put them in your room."

The brain scans of the teenagers revealed that when they are subjected to constant criticism by nagging mothers, there is increased activity in the "affective networks" of the brain, but decreased activity in "cognitive control networks" and "social cognitive networks". Meaning, areas of their brains associated with negative emotions go into overdrive, while the areas needed for emotional control exhibited reduced activity.

"The decrement in brain activity in regions involved in perspective taking could help to explain the high frequency of conflict resolution in parent-adolescent [pairs]. The results suggest that youth may respond to maternal criticism with increased emotional reactivity but decreased cognitive control and social cognitive processing," the study stated, Daily Mail reports.

The researchers say that a better understanding of children's responses to parental criticism can be the key to modifying parental feedback, in turn helping in the emotional development of the youth.