Communicating Science Through Visual Media: Synaptic Pruning

This animation project was created by Elisabeth Evans, Denali Schmidt, and Alexandra Urban through the class "Communicating Science Through Visual Media." This class, offered jointly by professors at RISD and Brown and in partnership with the Science Center and the Creative Mind Initiative, explores and develops the pedagogy of using visual media to convey scientific concepts.

"Synaptic Pruning"
2014
Elisabeth Evans, Denali Schmidt, Alexandra Urban

You look at a coffee cup, you see a coffee cup. But what if when you looked at the cup, your eyes sent signals to the auditory center of the brain? Not only would you see the coffee cup, you would start hearing things too… How distracting! Now imagine how confusing an entire city would be with all this overlapping sensory information. Well, this might actually happen if we didn’t have synaptic pruning.

[michellebene]

this was so well explained and animated

[porsche-dd]

this is why we must help our children to form the best habits possible for the most functional offspring, i am glad my parents did

[eddition]

I’ve finally figured out why my thoughts are so disorganized and why there’s that constant mental noise in my head. It’s because my brain didn’t get rid of any synapses when I was a baby. Now I really wish I could see a psychologist about this.

[DeJake]

Observing personalities, maybe more open/intuitive people have more synapses, so they can relate more things to each other. Less open or 'sensing' people would have much less, so their brain is more organised and sensible but less open at the same time

[franciscocovarrubiasizquie]

Hello, I would like to reproduce this video inside Chilean schools in order to develop a drug prevention progam. Who should I talk with to have this private copyright access?

[eneagramaconocete]

Hi, how can I ask for permission to subtitle this video in Spanish to make it available to Spanish people. I live in Mexico and have a program to empower women in collaboration with junior league of Mexico city. To whom I shall write? Thanks for your help.

[JuanDeag]

Oh, so this is why I am a good for nothing loser: I've spent my entire adolescence online, leaving the house only for school...