Everyone knows your brain hasn’t finished maturing until you’re 25. That’s so well-known, in fact, that some countries (like Scotland) have built it into their criminal justice system, giving lower sentences to under-25s—even very violent ones—on account of their immature brains.
But in this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart discuss what the evidence really says about when the brain matures—and the trickiness of linking important policy decisions to the science.
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Show notes
The three Scottish criminal cases:
Community service not jail for rape (and the conviction later quashed)
The Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines from 2022
The commissioned review by University of Edinburgh on brain maturation
Useful 2022 Nature paper on structural “brain charts for the human lifespan”
2024 preprint on the lifespan trajectory of functional brain activation for cognitive control
2023 paper with 10,000 people aged 8-35 measured on executive function tests
BBC Science Focus article by Dean Burnett on the “brain matures at age 25” idea
“The myth of the 25-year-old brain” in Slate
Stuart’s i article from last year on the Scottish Sentencing Council
Credits
The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.
Episode 47: The 25 year old brain