Reference
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
Her work on the adolescent brain is the basis for saying development continues well past the teens, and for saying it does not stop at a number.
Blakemore's research established that the brain keeps changing structurally and functionally through adolescence and into the twenties, particularly in the regions involved in social understanding and in planning. Before this line of work, adolescence was largely treated as a hormonal and social phenomenon happening to a brain that had already finished.
What her work does not support is the claim it is most often cited for. Continued development into the twenties is not the same as a completion date, and there is no point in her research where a brain is declared finished. The popular "fully developed at 25" figure attaches a precision to that literature which the literature does not contain.
Referenced work
- Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain (2018) reference
Elsewhere
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