The New Executive Brain by Goldberg Elkhonon

Author:Goldberg, Elkhonon [Goldberg, Elkhonon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Biological Maturation and Social Maturity: A Historical Puzzle

The implicit definition of social maturity changes throughout the history of society, as so does the time of “coming of age.” In various cultures, the time when a boy becomes a man has been codified through rituals, and the change of this time in history is quite revealing.

In the Jewish tradition the age of 13 is celebrated by the bar mitzvah. In modern times, it is a joyous ritual full of symbolism. However, when the celebration is over, the boy remains a boy. The ritual of bar mitzvah probably reflects the reality of three millennia ago, when the age of 13 was the age of transition from boyhood to manhood with all its profound connotations.

Initiation rites symbolizing the passage into adulthood are also found in other cultures. On the Indonesian island of Bali, I observed the ceremony of mepanes (tooth filing). Mepanes is performed in late adolescence, around the age of 16, and is the prerequisite for entering any adult institution, such as marriage. Surrounded with colorful ritual heightened by the sound of ceremonial gamelans, the young man’s or woman’s teeth are filed by a sangging (a junior Hindu priest). The symbolism of the ritual is revealing.

Ida Bagus Madhe Adnyana, a young Brahmin who had had his own teeth ritually filed a few years earlier, explained the meaning of the ceremony as follows. By acquiring flat and even teeth, the teenager is set apart from animals, whose teeth are sharp and uneven. Flattening the teeth symbolizes joining the world of civilization. Six front upper teeth are filed, corresponding to six vices: kama (lust), krodha (anger), lobha (greed), moha (drunkenness), mada (arrogance), and matsuya (jealousy). Flattening the teeth symbolizes the tempering of these impulses and bringing them under the control of reason. We already know that many of these socially undesirable traits are tempered by the frontal lobes and become unmanageable with orbitofrontal injury.

As society became more complex and increasingly governed by brain rather than brawn and as the life span increased, the age of maturity was pushed up. In modern Western societies the age of 18 (or thereabout) has been codified in the law as the age of social maturity. This is the age when a person can vote and is held responsible for his or her actions as an adult.

The age of 18 is also the age when the maturation of the frontal lobes is relatively complete. Various estimates can be used to measure the course of maturation of various brain structures. Among the most commonly used such measures is pathway myelinization.18 Long pathways connecting different parts of the brain are covered with white fatty tissue called “myelin.”

Myelin insulates the pathway and speeds the neural signal transmission along the pathway. The presence of myelin makes communication between different parts of the brain faster and more reliable. Obviously, long-distance communication is particularly important for the frontal lobes, the CEO of the brain, since their role is to coordinate the activities of its many parts.

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