Adolescents’ brains are “wired” differently than adults. Because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to mature during development, adolescents tend to use other areas – in this case emotional areas – of the brain in making decisions. For example, brain activity, seen with functional MRI, shows that when judging emotion represented on a face, a teenager’s amygdala (right) is activated, reflecting more of a gut reaction than a reasoned one, while the adult’s (left) brain is activated in an area of the prefrontal cortex involved more in reasoning and reflection.