Deak is a psychologist and author of "Girls will be Girls." She lectures around the world about sex and gender. And she's on the board of the Seattle Girls' School. She spoke mostly about adolescence, which she called the magic decade, because there are "things going on that didn't happen before and that won't happen again," she said. I called her office in Ohio and she explained that the amygdala, the part of the brain that deals with emotions, swells, which makes all teens more sensitive and volatile. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex stops functioning well. That's the part that controls higher functions, like judgment. Hormones keep teens from falling asleep when parents say they should and make it difficult for them to wake up at hours dictated by school schedules. The single most profound difference we could make on education, Deak said, would be to let teens sleep on nature's schedule (midnight to 9 a.m. or later).

In fact, your brain is the boss of your body. It runs the show and controls just about everything you do, even when you're asleep. Not bad for something that looks like a big, wrinkly, gray sponge