Teens grow more compassionate with age, according to new research

By Staff Writer

Parents who grow frustrated with their adolescent's seeming inability to understand others who have different points of view may be unaware of how teen brains develop.

As children mature, the regions in a specific brain network known as the default-mode network (DMN) begin to work together, according to WebMD. Parents are likely to notice a difference in their children's ability to look outside themselves as they get older, according to new research presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.

Between ages 13 and 19, the regions of the DMN start to work in concert, according to researcher Stuart Washington, a postdoctoral research fellow at Georgetown University and Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

That is the case in typically developing children, he says, but not in those with autism. When he compared the normally developing children he studied with those who had autism, he did not find that the DMN worked more as the autistic children grew older.

The Centers for Disease Control report that an average of one in 110 children in the U.S. have an autism spectrum disorder.