Are the Brains of Reckless Teens More Mature Than Those of Their Prudent Peers?

A new study suggests that teens who are the heaviest risk takers may actually have brains that appear to be more adult, in development, than those of their peers:

If valid, the study has important implications for interpreting risk-taking in teens. It suggests that the brains of many teens who behave dangerously are maturing early: Reckless behavior might in fact be a sign of adultness. Some adults do risky things (speeding, drinking, having unprotected sex) quite commonly without causing great alarm. Automatically considering such behaviors to be more objectionable just because someone is young runs into what the researchers call in their paper "a conundrum of defining risk (or dangerousness) based not on the objective attributes of the activity but on the person engaging in them."