Frans Johansson’s The Medici Effect shows how breakthrough ideas most often occur when we bring concepts from one field into a new, unfamiliar territory, and offers examples how we can turn the ideas we discover into path-breaking innovations.
(Book description from the publisher, Harvard Business School Press)
At age 11 or 12, the brain experiences a wave of synapse formation (similar to the growth spurt seen in infants), followed in adolescence by a process of synaptic pruning (much like pruning the weaker branches of a tree). Consequently, the “use it or lose it” principle becomes critical in adolescence. Dr. Jay Giedd, Neuroscientist, FRONTLINE: Inside the Human Brain (1991)