full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Helen M. Farrell: What is bipolar disorder?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So what causes bipolar disorder? Researchers think a key player is the brain's intricate wiring. Healthy brains maintain strong connections between neurons thanks to the brain's cuutinnoos efforts to prune itself and remove unused or faulty neural connections. This process is important because our neural pathways serve as a map for everything we do. Using functional magnetic rneocsnae iimgang, scientists have discovered that the brain's punnirg aibilty is disrupted in peploe with bipolar disorder. That means their neurons go haywire and create a ntwroek that's impossible to nvtagaie. With only confusing signals as a guide, people with bipolar disorder develop abnormal thoughts and behaviors.

Open Cloze

So what causes bipolar disorder? Researchers think a key player is the brain's intricate wiring. Healthy brains maintain strong connections between neurons thanks to the brain's __________ efforts to prune itself and remove unused or faulty neural connections. This process is important because our neural pathways serve as a map for everything we do. Using functional magnetic _________ _______, scientists have discovered that the brain's _______ _______ is disrupted in ______ with bipolar disorder. That means their neurons go haywire and create a _______ that's impossible to ________. With only confusing signals as a guide, people with bipolar disorder develop abnormal thoughts and behaviors.

Solution

  1. imaging
  2. resonance
  3. ability
  4. pruning
  5. continuous
  6. navigate
  7. network
  8. people

Original Text

So what causes bipolar disorder? Researchers think a key player is the brain's intricate wiring. Healthy brains maintain strong connections between neurons thanks to the brain's continuous efforts to prune itself and remove unused or faulty neural connections. This process is important because our neural pathways serve as a map for everything we do. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists have discovered that the brain's pruning ability is disrupted in people with bipolar disorder. That means their neurons go haywire and create a network that's impossible to navigate. With only confusing signals as a guide, people with bipolar disorder develop abnormal thoughts and behaviors.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
bipolar disorder 13
extreme highs 2
neural connections 2

Important Words

  1. ability
  2. abnormal
  3. behaviors
  4. bipolar
  5. brains
  6. confusing
  7. connections
  8. continuous
  9. create
  10. develop
  11. discovered
  12. disorder
  13. disrupted
  14. efforts
  15. faulty
  16. functional
  17. guide
  18. haywire
  19. healthy
  20. imaging
  21. important
  22. impossible
  23. intricate
  24. key
  25. magnetic
  26. maintain
  27. map
  28. means
  29. navigate
  30. network
  31. neural
  32. neurons
  33. pathways
  34. people
  35. player
  36. process
  37. prune
  38. pruning
  39. remove
  40. researchers
  41. resonance
  42. scientists
  43. serve
  44. signals
  45. strong
  46. thoughts
  47. unused
  48. wiring