Synaptic Pruning - Early Brain Development | Neuroscience 101

Toddlers have an amazing ability to learn. This is made possible by the rapid growth of brain connections followed by synaptic pruning. But what is synaptic pruning?

Young children can learn new languages, motor abilities and complex thinking almost without effort. When a baby is born, it has the same amount of neurons as an adult. However, those neurons are not all connected yet. In the first two to three years of a childrens life a massive amount of connections between neurons (brain cells) are made. This process is called synaptogenesis. Actually, the brain forms many more connections than it actually needs. This is why during brian development synapses (brain connections) that are important will remain, and become stronger. This is made possible by neural and synaptic plasticity. However, connections that are not useful disappear again.

This explains why a toddler has more connections in the brain than an adult. It is because they have a lot of unused connections.

Time stamps:
0:00 Children learn easily
1:24 Synaptogenesis
2:52 Synaptic pruning
4:12 Brain development and neural plasticity
7:00 An example of synaptic pruning
8:02 Why first synaptogenesis followed by synaptic pruning?
9:03 Ending

References

Narrated by: Miles Wischnewski

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[jasa]

This is a really good, underappreciated channel. Thank you very much!

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a video about children that doesn't talk about epileptogenesis? shame.