The short answer is No, despite their knowledge of the brain.

Because they
appreciate that the neural circuits that control a teenager’s ability
to focus don’t finish developing until late adolescence,
neuroscientists make better parents, right? Not necessarily,
according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Dr Arthur
Toga, of UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, has been scanning his
20-year-old daughter’s brain since she was 6. The sheaf of scans
represent one of the longest sequences in the new field of the
neurobiology of youth. Did it make him more patient, more tolerant,
more understanding? Nope. “It
is sad but true: It didn’t help me at all,” he told the WSJ.
“You’d think it would make me more tolerant. I should have been,
because I knew what was going on as a matter of neural development.”
~ Wall
Street Journal, Nov 23

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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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