BBC News quiz of the week: What age did scientists say your brain reaches adulthood?

Intro

This week, discussions on ending the war in Ukraine continued, BBC board members faced questioning from MPs, and President Trump carried out the traditional Thanksgiving turkey pardon. Against this backdrop, readers were invited to test how closely they followed the rest of the week’s news in a BBC current affairs quiz focused on major global events and one striking neuroscience finding about when the brain becomes fully adult.

Quiz focus and context

The quiz highlights diverse stories from around the world, asking participants to recall details beyond the headline conflicts and political hearings in the UK and abroad. It uses a mix of light and serious topics, with the brain-adulthood question standing out because it challenges common assumptions that adulthood begins in the late teens or early twenties.

The brain adulthood question

One quiz question refers to a large neuroscience study that identified distinct stages of brain development across life and concluded that the brain does not reach its adult phase until the early thirties, around age 32. Scientists involved in this research described adolescence as lasting from about nine to 32 years, after which the brain enters a more stable “adult” stage in which its networks have reached peak organisation and efficiency.

Structure of the quiz

The news quiz was compiled by BBC journalist Ben Fell and is presented as a short weekly challenge for readers to check what they remember from recent coverage. Participants are encouraged to compare their scores with previous weeks’ quizzes or dive into archived editions if they want to revisit earlier news cycles and test their longer-term recall.

Quote

“In the past week, discussions aimed at concluding the conflict in Ukraine persisted, members of the BBC board faced intense questioning from Members of Parliament, and President Trump performed the customary pardon for a turkey.”

Author’s summary

This news quiz blends political, scientific and cultural stories into a compact weekly challenge, using the surprising claim that the brain reaches adulthood only in the early thirties to make readers reflect on how well they truly follow and remember world events.

BBC — 2025-11-27