American researchers reveal that this change appears in neuronal activity from the age of 13.
On April 28, the magazine The Journal of Neuroscience relayed the results of a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University in California. First of all, they remind us, and very many parents have little experience of this, that “The social universe of children changes during adolescence. While the socialization of young children revolves around parents and caregivers, adolescence is characterized by a shift in social orientation towards non-family members..
Functional brain MRI
And this change, the scientists were able to observe it at the neural level: “When young children hear their mother’s voice, certain areas of their brain show greater activity than when hearing unfamiliar and unfamiliar voices. It is striking to note that the adolescents older children exhibit the opposite effect, with increased activity for the voices of non-family members relative to their mother’s voice”.
How did they come to this conclusion? From a technological point of view, that of functional cerebral MRI was used with volunteers aged 7 to 16 years. Mothers had to utter meaningless words while recording their voices. The MRI revealed the regions of the brain reacting when the volunteers listened to the recordings.
The privileged voice of strangers
The researchers also retransmitted other recordings in which the participants heard the voices of unknown people.
What conclusion? If adolescents are naturally always able to recognize the mother’s voice without ambiguity, around the age of 13 or 14 their brain begins to react with less intensity to this voice, and on the contrary more intensely to the voice of unfamiliar people.
For the authors of the study, this phenomenon “is rooted in neurobiological changes. When teens seem to rebel by not listening to their parents, it’s because they’re wired to pay more attention to strangers’ voices.. Here they are armed with a great excuse, and it couldn’t be more scientific!