Rethinking Education cover image

S3E1: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore - The GCSE is misaligned with adolescent brain development

Rethinking Education

00:00

Is There a Period of More Intensive Synaptic Pruning in Adolescent Development?

The number of synapses increases until late childhood around the age which most children go through puberty and then starts to decline. The prefrontal cortex is involved in all sorts of high-level cognitive processes including executive control working memory attention but also things like social cognition and self-awareness. It's difficult to get hold of post-mortem brains of different ages and then count the number of synapse in slices of brain tissue is a very laborious process that takes a long time.

Transcript
Play full episode

The AI-powered Podcast Player

Save insights by tapping your headphones, chat with episodes, discover the best highlights - and more!
App store bannerPlay store banner
Get the app