The teen brain - don't be afraid

Are adolescents really just thrill-seekers who struggle to learn from negative outcomes? The answer, as we will talk about, is a big no. I will share some exciting research from my lab, using insights from EEG and behavioural tasks to challenge common misconceptions about teens. We will explore what these findings reveal about brain plasticity, risk-taking, and mental health, and why adolescence—while for most is an age full of opportunity—can also be a time of increased vulnerability. This will be an informal and interactive talk, so feel free to jump in with any questions, thoughts, or anything that fascinates you about the teenage brain!

Dr Liat Levita is the head of the Developmental Affective Neuroscience Lab and a Reader in Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. Her research takes a translational approach to understanding adolescence—a period of both immense opportunity and heightened vulnerability. By examining individual developmental trajectories from childhood through adulthood, she investigates both normative and non-normative development, with a focus on the impact of early life stress on well-being. She also studies the emergence of mental health pathologies, using a combination of brain imaging and psychophysiological methods (e.g., heart rate). She has held academic positions at the Universities of York, Sheffield, and Sussex, following postdoctoral research at Cornell, Columbia, and Emory Universities. She earned her PhD from the University of Cambridge and BSc in Neuroscience from the University of St Andrews.

Venue: This talk will take place at the Wagner Hall on West Street, Brighton; doors and bar open at 7:15, talk starts at 8:00. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers at the end of the talk.

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