[Source:  Medical News Today]
As we grow older, our brains reorganize themselves, pruning and streamlining nerve fiber linkages to reduce overall network connectivity while selectively preserving long-distance connections that are crucial to information integration.
Now, a team led by Newcastle University in the UK has found this brain streamlining starts earlier in girls, suggesting it may explain why they mature before boys in their teen years.
The researchers also suggest this gradual, selective reduction of connections may be the reason brain function does not deteriorate – it even improves – during network pruning.
One of the study leaders, Dr. Marcus Kaiser, reader in Neuroinformatics at Newcastle, says:
“Long-distance connections are difficult to establish and maintain but are crucial for fast and efficient processing.”
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