Why does pruning happen

The scientists found that the brains of the adolescents with autism had a lot more synapses than the brains of neurotypical adolescents. Young children in both groups had roughly the same number of synapses. This suggests that the condition may occur during the pruning process. This research only shows a difference in synapses, but not whether this difference might be a cause or an effect of autism, or just an association. This under-pruning theory may help explain some of the common symptoms of autism, like oversensitivity to noise, lights, and social experiences, as well as epileptic seizures.

If there are too many synapses firing at once, a person with autism will likely experience an overload of noise rather than a fine-tuned brain response. Additionally, past research has linked autism with mutations in genes that act on a protein known as mTOR kinase. Large amounts of overactive mTOR have been found in the brains of autism patients. Over-activity in the mTOR pathway has also been shown to be associated with an excess production of synapses.

One study found that mice with overactive mTOR had defects in their synaptic pruning and exhibited ASD-like social behaviors. Synaptic pruning is an essential part of brain development. By getting rid of the synapses that are no longer used, the brain becomes more efficient as you age. Today, most ideas about human brain development draw on this idea of brain plasticity.

Researchers are now looking into ways to control pruning with medications or targeted therapy. Researchers are also studying how the shape of the synapses might play a role in mental disabilities. The process of synaptic pruning may be a promising target for treatments for people with conditions like schizophrenia and autism.

However, research is still in the early stages. You can improve your brain health with the right diet. Eat these 11 foods to boost your memory and focus, help prevent disease, and keep sharp as you…. The synaptic pruning that helps sculpt the adolescent brain into its adult form continues to weed out weak neural connections throughout our 20s. The surprise finding could have implications for our understanding of schizophrenia, a psychological disorder which often appears in early adulthood.

As children, we overproduce the connections — synapses — between brain cells. During puberty the body carries out a kind of topiary , snipping away some synapses while allowing others to strengthen.

Over a few years, the number of synapses roughly halves, and the adult brain emerges. Synaptic pruning can be a good thing because some of the associations a child has for how the world works become more complex as he grows older. How does this relate to your child? What could be better than that? Start building his cognitive functions so his brain can start pruning. Your email address will not be published. Login Request Fees.

Han Viet Bui on March 15, at pm. Using electron microscopy to analyze carefully selected autopsied human brains, he showed that synapses—the tiny connections between neurons—proliferate after birth, reaching twice their neonatal levels by mid- to late childhood, and then decrease precipitously during adolescence. These changes at the synapse level cause neural restructuring that very likely has important consequences for normal and abnormal brain function.

Streamlining neural circuits could explain the boost in cognitive skills that occurs in our late teens or early 20s. The loss of redundant pathways could help elucidate why we have difficulty recovering from a traumatic brain injury: eliminating synaptic redundancies diminishes our ability to develop alternative pathways to bypass the damaged region. In addition, many major mental illnesses start to emerge in adolescence, which may be caused by aberrant synaptic pruning.

In I hypothesized that disordered synaptic pruning could explain the age of onset of schizophrenia, and in researchers published genetic and experimental evidence supporting this association in Nature.

Although we are only beginning to unravel the ramifications of synaptic pruning in the human brain, this process clearly has significant consequences for normal human brain function and may provide key insights into the causes of some devastating and mysterious neuropsychiatric diseases. Do you have a question about the brain you would like an expert to answer? Send it to Editors sciam.