Use It Or Lose It: A Good Brain Pruning

We are learning more about the human brain every day, and the more we can find out about our brains, the better we will understand ourselves and our society. The two texts, “Embarrassed? Blame Your Brain” by Jennifer Connor-Smith and “Use It or Lose It: A Good Brain Pruning” by Laura K. Zimmermann, tell us different ways the brain is responsible for specific human behavior. Both texts describe a relationship between the brain and human behavior, but there are many differences in the information the texts presents you. They each explain a different behavior the brain is responsible for, how the brain affects different age ranges, and a period in history that the behavior was necessary for human survival. In the first text, Connor-Smith explains

Connor-Smith describes how the brain will affect teenagers and what happens to their brains, while Zimmermann describes what happens in the brains of young children. Connor-Smith tells us that adults have developed a chemical defender in their brains for when they have anxieties that will soothe them and generate positive thoughts. However, teenagers don’t have this defender and are therefore more likely to get more upset over embarrassing situations. Connor-Smith says, “Unfortunately, the systems that trigger embarrassment and fear of rejection fire up years before the systems that tame bad feelings.” While Connor-Smith explains the result that having unbalanced systems in our brain can do to us, especially as teenagers and the inability to soothe our anxieties, Zimmermann explains how small children are constantly building more connections and pruning away those connections that we don’t use as often. She says, “When we are young we have way more connections between our neurons than we need. These extra connections are there, ready to be used to build networks for the things we experience.” She tells us that we go through major pruning processes as we learn new skills that we need to re-inforce and as we don’t use connections that aren’t vital to our lives. Both Connor-Smith and Zimmerman tell us how the brain affects different age groups, but because they each explain a different