The brain doesn’t work the way you’d think. We tend to imagine that more is better - more neurons, more connections, more brain power. But in human development, the brain actually peaks early and then deletes.
Babies are born with roughly 100 billion neurons. By adulthood, that number has dropped to about 86 billion. They’re also born with a wild over-supply of synaptic connections between neurons. Around age 2-3, the brain has about twice as many synapses as it’ll ever have again.
Then comes the pruning. As you grow up, your brain notices which connections you actually use and which you don’t. The unused ones get trimmed away. The used ones get strengthened. This process - called synaptic pruning - keeps going until your mid-20s. By the time your brain is fully “adult,” it’s been pruned and customized into a finely-tuned machine, very efficient at the things you’ve practiced and worse at the things you haven’t.
