New Study Reveals The Reason Teens Seem to Tune Out Their Mom's Voice

Are you even listening to me?

It is a question that discouraged parents often throw at their teenagers, and the answer is probably no.

It is hard to blame them. A new research shows that our mother's voice feels less valuable when we have a different reaction to it with time.

When scanning the brains of children under the age of 12 years old, they showed an amazing neural response to their mother's voice.

A change occurs around a child's 13th birthday.

The mother's voice doesn't generate the same reaction anymore. A teenager's brain appears to be more responsive to all voices in general, regardless of their sex.

Researchers were able to guess a child's age based on how their brain responded to their mother's voice.

An adolescent knows to tune into novel voices just as an infant knows to tune into her mother's voice.

You don't know you're doing this as a teen. You want to spend time with your friends and you are just being yourself. Your mind is attracted to the voices that are unfamiliar.

Researchers think this is a sign of the teenage brain. A teenager does not close off their family because their brain is maturing in a healthy way.

Numerous lines of evidence show that a mother's voice plays an important role in their health and development, impacting their stress levels, their social bonding, their feeding skills, and their processing of speech.

It makes sense that a child's brain is in tune with their parent.

There is a point when listening to people other than your mother is more beneficial.

When teens seem to be rebelling by not listening to their parents, it is because they are wired to pay more attention to voices outside their home, according to a neuroscientist.

A team of researchers published fMRI results in 2016 that showed children under the age of 12 show brain circuits that are engaged by a mother's voice.

The study was extended to 22 teenagers, between 13 and 16 years of age, and the mother's voice didn't have the same effect.

All voices heard by teenagers activated neural circuits that picked out information and formed social memories.

When presented with a recording of their mother's voice saying three nonsense words, as opposed to a stranger's voice saying the same thing, the participants' brain scans showed less activity in the reward centers of the brain.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that helps determine which social information is most valuable.

Researchers are looking into how the brain circuits differ in people with neurological conditions.

According to researchers at Stanford, those with the condition don't show the same response to their mother's voice as younger children. Understanding how social development occurs could be aided by knowing more about the underlying neuroscience.

The findings of the current study suggest that as we get older, our hearing is less focused on our mother and more on the voices of other people.

The idea is supported by other behavioral and neural studies that suggest the reward centers in the adolescent brain are marked by heightened sensitivity to novelty.

Teenagers can better understand the perspective and intentions of others with these changes.

A child becomes independent at some point, and that has to be precipitated by an underlying biological signal, according to Menon.

This is a signal that helps teens engage with the world and form connections which allow them to be socially proficient outside their families.

The Journal of Neuroscience published the study.