The brain goes through five distinct phases in life, with key turning points at ages nine, 32, 66 and 83, scientists have revealed. Around 4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells. Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed that the brain stays in the adolescent phase until our early thirties when we peak. They say the results could help us understand why the risk of mental health disorders and dementia varies through life. The brain is constantly changing in response to new knowledge and experience - but the research shows this is not one smooth pattern from birth to death.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. My earliest memories are more like nostalgic flickers. The candle I burned my finger on. The plastic toy set that occupied my playtime. These disparate and vague recollections are all most of us can remember of our first years of life.

If you've ever had an argument with the opposite sex, it may be tempting to conclude that men and women just aren't on the same wavelength. Now, a study not only suggests this is indeed the case, but that males and females really are wired differently from birth. In what's described as one of the biggest studies of newborn brain anatomy, scientists performed head scans of more than 500 babies. Overall, the female babies had more grey matter in their brains, while the males had more white matter. Grey matter is mostly found on the outer-most layer of the brain, or cortex, and plays a big role in mental functions, such as memory, emotions and processing information.

PragerU personality Aldo Buttazzoni joins'Fox News @ Night' to discuss the dating trends among Gen Z men and shares how Americans feel about a bug-based diet. Gen Z teens and young adults are having less sex than past generations and want less sexually explicit content shown in the media they watch. A new study from UCLA found that Gen Z teenagers and adults are asking for fewer sex scenes in the television and movies they consume. The "Teens and Screens" report out of the school's Center for Scholars and Storytellers found that 51.5% of adolescents would prefer to see more content that portrays platonic relationships and close friendships. The study also found that 44.4% of youth surveyed felt that romance in media was "overused."

Profound changes to the substance and structure of our lives -- wrought by disruptive technologies ranging from smartphones and social media to newly ascendent AI -- often go unnoticed amidst the rush of daily life. Over 30 percent of U.S. adults report "almost constant" online activity, something that would have been impossible only two decades ago. From an early age, children are exposed to digital technologies, and one recent study found that two- and three-year-olds average two hours of screen time daily. Nor is this phenomenon simply a matter of media consumption. Ordinary market transactions, whether online shopping or home mortgage applications, are now facilitated through sophisticated algorithmic systems.

"As a 12-year-old, I've spent much of my life on screens, in school and at home, which can definitely be fun. But I also struggle with depression, and sometimes I feel like I haven't done enough'kid' things. When I grow up, will I feel like I wasted my childhood?" For philosophical guidance on encounters with technology, open a support ticket via email; or register and post a comment below. The ability to project oneself into times yet to come, to think about the present as one phase in a much longer life, is a sign of uncommon maturity--though this prudence often comes with burdens of its own.

When Leonardo DiCaprio's relationship with model/actress Camila Morrone ended three months after she celebrated her 25th birthday, the lifestyle site YourTango turned to neuroscience. DiCaprio has a well-documented history of dating women under 25. "Given that DiCaprio's cut-off point is exactly around the time that neuroscientists say our brains are finished developing, there is certainly a case to be made that a desire to date younger partners comes from a desire to have control," the article said. It quotes a couples therapist, who says that at 25, people's "brains are fully formed and that presents a more elevated and conscious level of connection"--the type of connection, YourTango suggests, that DiCaprio wants to avoid. YourTango was parroting a factoid that's gained a chokehold over pop science in the past decade: that 25 marks the age at which our brains become "fully developed" or "mature." This assertion has been used as an explanation for a vast range of phenomena.

Transition to Adulthood is an essential life stage for many families. The prior research has shown that young people with intellectual or development disabil-ities (IDD) have more challenges than their peers. This study is to explore how to use natural language processing (NLP) methods, especially unsupervised machine learning, to assist psychologists to analyze emotions and sentiments and to use topic modeling to identify common issues and challenges that young people with IDD and their families have. Additionally, the results were compared to those obtained from young people without IDD who were in tran-sition to adulthood. The findings showed that NLP methods can be very useful for psychologists to analyze emotions, conduct cross-case analysis, and sum-marize key topics from conversational data. Our Python code is available at https://github.com/mlaricheva/emotion_topic_modeling.

Children who grow up in low-income households but who make friends that come from higher-income homes are more likely to have higher salaries in adulthood than those who have fewer such friends. "There's been a lot of speculation… that the individuals' access to social capital, their social networks and the community they live in might matter a lot for a child's chance to rise out of poverty," says Raj Chetty at Harvard University. To find out how if that holds up, he and his colleagues analysed anonymised Facebook data belonging to 72.2 million people in the US between the ages of 25 and 44, accounting for 84 per cent of the age group's US population. It is relatively nationally representative of that age group, he says. The team used a machine learning algorithm to determine each person's socioeconomic status (SES), combining data such as the median income of people who live in the same region, the person's age, sex and the value of their phone model as a proxy for individual income.

Going to college or university and getting a degree may help prepare you for the working world -- but it won't stop age-related brain shrinkage, a study found. Education has long been associated with health benefits -- including a decreased risk of heart disease, a delayed peak in cognitive abilities and lower risk of dementia. It has been contended that greater levels of education in childhood and early adulthood can slow the rate of brain aging in late adulthood. To put this to the test, an international team of researchers analysed the brain structure of some 2,000 people at different stages of their lives. They found that while higher education can lead to larger brain volumes, it does nothing significant to stave off the ravages of age.