What is pruning related to the brain?
Pruning means getting rid of unused synapses in the brain. Find out why pruning is important with Frances Jensen, MD, neurology department chair at the University of Pennsylvania.
Transcript
This perfect balance of synapses has to be honed for that individual. And it has to happen over time.
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Pruning means unused synapses get removed. The most synapses you will ever have happens in childhood and in early life.
Too many synapses is probably not a good thing. We know that too much connectivity and too many synapses can be actually causative of diseases
like epilepsy, for instance. The wrong synapses being kept might underlie autism,
for instance. So this perfect balance of synapses has to be honed for that individual.
And it has to happen over time. So that's really what we call pruning.
Cells that aren't used or connections that aren't used tend to be mopped back up by helper cells in our brains.
brain health nervous system
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