presidents and criminals

I once asked Martha Denckla, who was, I believe, one of the originators of the concept of executive function, when the brain is finally mature.

She said either, “Sometime in the early 30s,” or “Around age 35.”

I need to start writing these things down.

Her point was that the myelination process continues into your 30s.

Then she said, “That’s the reason the Constitution says presidents have to be 35 years old or older. People intuitively understand that the brain isn’t fully mature until that age.”

She also said that it’s not until age 35 that criminals can be released from prison and not become recidivists.





large [scary] cohorts of young people

According to Samuel Huntington and others, large cohorts of young people are trouble, often enough:

For years to come Muslim populations will be disproportionately young populations, with a notable demographic bulge of teenagers and people in their twenties…In addition, the people in this age cohort will be overwhelmingly urban and have at least a secondary education….

…young people are the protagonists of protest, instability, reform, and revolution. Historically, the existence of large cohorts of young people has tended to coincide with such movements. “The Protestant Reformation,” it has been said, “is an example of one of the outstanding youth movements in history.” Demographic growth, Jack Goldstone has persuasively argued, was a central factor in the two waves of revolution that occurred in Eurasia in the mid-seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. A notable expansion of the proportion of youth in Western countries coincided with the “Age of the Democratic Revolution” in the last decades of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century successful industrialization and emigration reduced the political impact of young populations in European societies. The proportions of youth rose again in the 1920s, however, providing recruits to fascist and other extremist movements. Four decades later the post-World War II baby boom generation made its mark politically in the demonstrations and protests of the 1960s.

[snip]

Finally, and most important, the demographic explosion in Muslim societies and the availability of large numbers of often unemployed males between the ages of fifteen and thirty is a natural source of instability and violence both within Islam and against non-Muslims. Whatever other causes may be at work, this factor alone would go a long way to explaining Muslim violence in the 1980s and 1990s. The aging of this pig-in-the-python generation by the third decade of the twenty-first century and economic development in Muslim societies, if and as that occurs, could consequently lead to a significant reduction in Muslim violence propensities…

Why are young men more violent than older men?

Leaving aside the question of why young men are more violent than young women, I’m guessing it's the same reason criminals don't get rehabilitated until their 30s and the U.S. doesn't allow anyone under 35 to run for president. Until sometime around age 30 or later, a young man's frontal lobes, which inhibit action and modulate emotion, are still maturing. The frontal lobes are the brakes.

It seems we have converging lines of evidence. History and neuroscience both make the same prediction as to when the Long War is likely to wind down.





update

Good grief.

Apparently myelination happens in your 40s, too:

Kurt Fischer has identified cognitive changes through age 25, as well as significant growth in the myelin connecting the frontal lobes and limbic regions in adults between the ages of 40 and 50, apparently allowing for a “second chance” at reflective thinking.

The "limbic regions" handle emotion; when people talk about the "lizard brain" they mean the limbic system. (IIRC, Joseph LeDoux argues that there isn't a limbic system, (NOT FACT-CHECKED) but he doesn't seem to have won this argument yet.)



You can see in this illustration that the limbic system
is an ancient and primitive part of the brain because of
its position, deep down inside.








sources:
Teenage Brain: a work in progress (NIH)

frontal lobes, executive function, & IQ
hovering is good (MiddleWeb)
being your child's frontal lobes
organization is overrated
executive function, IQ, & hovering, part 1
the discovery of executive function, part 2
executive function self-test
presidents & criminals & the frontal lobes
ISIS initiate sustain inhibit shift

page splatter
page splatter & the frontal lobes

Dear Abby
Susan on dating
Catherine's brain-based dating rule

-- CatherineJohnson - 23 May 2006

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WebLogForm
Title:	presidents and criminals
TopicType:	WebLog
SubjectArea:	CognitiveScience
LogDate:	200605231633