Quote image editor
“The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the "correct" synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones. "It reinforces an old intuition," a psychiatrist in Boston told me. "The secret of learning is the systematic elimination of excess. We grow, mostly, by dying.” — Siddhartha Mukherjee
The reasons for this paring back of synapses is a mystery, but synaptic pruning is thought to sharpen and reinforce the "correct" synapses, while removing the weak and unnecessary ones. "It reinforces an old intuition," a psychiatrist in Boston told me. "The secret of learning is the systematic elimination of excess. We grow, mostly, by dying.