Henry Markram Quotes

Long-term memory involves enduring changes that result from the growth of new synaptic connections.

Neuroplasticity research showed that the brain changes its very structure with each different activity it performs, perfecting its circuits so it is better suited to the task at hand.

Our brains have the ability to reorganize themselves by forming new neural connections throughout our lives. This ability is called neuroplasticity.

As the brain matures, one thing that happens is the pruning of the synapses. Synaptic pruning does not occur willy-nilly; it depends largely on how any one brain pathway is used.

You could double the number of synaptic connections in a very simple neurocircuit as a result of experience and learning. The reason for that was that long-term memory alters the expression of genes in nerve cells, which is the cause of the growth of new synaptic connections.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses.

Nerve cells communicate with one another at specialized points called synapses. And these synapses are plastic - they can be modified by learning.

Your brain - every brain - is a work in progress. It is 'plastic.' From the day we're born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use it.

Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right.

Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.

The actual organization of behavior goes on the level of the individual nerve cells and their connections, and we have a hundred billion nerve cells, probably a hundred trillion connections. It's just mind-boggling to think of all the different ways in which they're arranged in a baby's head.

There is this mythology that says that when people are born, their brains are essentially fixed very early on and they're not able to change their connections. I was aware that was a myth and that people could learn new skills.

The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To a certain degree, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of those has about 10,000 connections.

There is an adage in neuroscience that circuits that wire together fire together. By engaging the brain and spinal cord together, we may be able to enhancce teh growth of [brain] circuits during rehabilitation.

Mediums change you by their very existence. They do this on fundamental levels because they force you to favour certain parts of your brain over others.

The brain was designed by evolution, so each part of it is optimized for what it does, and it's incredibly, incredibly complex.

I talked to a brain specialist who told me when you think like someone else for such a long time, your brain actually changes.

The brain is constantly adapting.

The brain is plastic its whole life span.

The connections in the brain fade away unless used. We know that early stimulation of children leads to higher cognitive scores.

There are no genes or areas in the brain devoted uniquely to reading. Rather, our ability to read represents our brain's protean capacity to learn something outside our repertoire by creating new circuits that connect existing circuits in a different way.

The principal activities of brains are making changes in themselves.

Most people (by the time they have become adults ) can't change their minds because their neural pathways have become set... the longer neural pathways have been running one way the harder it is to rewire them.

In the brain, you have connections between the neurons called synapses, and they can change. All your knowledge is stored in those synapses. You have about 1,000-trillion synapses - 10 to the 15, it's a very big number.

Whatever you train, you change your brain.