My brain does this!?

Any time I learn more about how the human brain works, I am truly amazed. To think about how hard my brain is working right now just to be able to type this blog post is astounding.

One of the things I enjoyed learning about was how the brain develops as we age. The brain is composed of neurons and synapses that allows it to process and hold information. These are the pieces that process everything we are taking in (like sight and sound) and what put information out (like making my fingers type this sentence). One of these neurons has the information processing capacity of a small computer. When we're born, our brain has 100 to 200 billion neurons, and 2,500 synapses. By age 2 or 3, we have 15,000 synapses.

As we get older, our brain begins to prune away synapses and neurons that we aren't using. There are two different versions of pruning: experience-expectant and experience-dependent, Experience-expectant pruning occurs when our brain produces neurons because they expect to use them, then as we age realizes we are not using them at all and prunes them away. An example of this occurs in Japanese infants. They are born with the ability to differentiate between the letters r and l, but because this isn't necessary in their language, they lose this ability. Experience-dependent pruning happens when connections are made based on an individual's experiences. Suppose a child is born without the ability to hear - the brain already has the neurons and synapses needed to decode sound, but because the child isn't using them, the pruning occurs. In place of these, the brain will produce more synapses and neurons needed for vision.

This is an interesting video that shows how neurons and synapses work to understand a new idea, as well as prune what is no longer needed.

I think what I find most interesting is how our brain does this all on its own. Our brain is able to adapt and change based on what it realizes we need.

Here is a link to the slides I created for the Cluter 2 PowerPoint.