How to Use synaptic in a Sentence

synaptic

adjective
Definition of synapticnext
  • Across how large a synaptic loop can the vital spark jump?
    — James Parker, The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2022
  • The pileups appear to promote amyloid buildup as well as synaptic loss.
    — Dominique Mosbergen, WSJ, 22 May 2022
  • In that split second, my brain went into synaptic overdrive.
    — Jack Holmes, Esquire, 28 Apr. 2017
  • But little more than a day later, the synaptic connections in his brain had began to function enough that his body moved again.
    — Jessica Bartlett, BostonGlobe.com, 9 Sep. 2022
  • Yet, the way in which the brain decides what synaptic connections to prune is another mystery to explore, Cirelli said.
    — Christopher Wanjek, Scientific American, 3 Feb. 2017
  • So this all points to something like this: autism is caused by disruption to the function of certain gene networks in the brain involved in synaptic function.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 28 May 2011
  • And none of these experimenters has done so with the intent of reversing the synaptic changes brought on by the use of cocaine or other drugs of addiction.
    — Adam Piore, Discover Magazine, 1 Apr. 2015
  • The sensory data that the chip receives, rather than marching along single file, fan out through its synaptic networks.
    — Kelly Clancy, The New Yorker, 15 Feb. 2017
  • Contrary to expectation, the synaptic strengths in the pallium remained about the same regardless of whether the fish learned anything.
    — Quanta Magazine, 3 Mar. 2022
  • Anxiety, joy, and lovelorn regrets slipping away, its synaptic tangles pruned branch by branch.
    — Django Gold, The New Yorker, 6 Aug. 2022
  • What are the tactile feedbacks, the synaptic connections, the satisfactions of a post-combustion era BMW?
    — Dan Neil, WSJ, 31 Aug. 2017
  • For example, in the tiny and molecularly crowded space of the synaptic cleft - the connection point between two neurons.
    — Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes, 23 Sep. 2021
  • And the events at the synaptic terminals when the action potential reaches the end of the axon are completely different than what is taking place in either the dendrites or the axon.
    — Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes, 2 Aug. 2022
  • Or that those are all hallucinatory images coming from the last synaptic firings of a past-his-prime flyboy getting smeared across the horizon alongside the pieces of his jet?
    — Vulture, 29 May 2022
  • Batista suggests that the changes in the synaptic connections between neurons that would be required for realignment may be too hard to accomplish quickly.
    — Quanta Magazine, 27 Mar. 2018
  • Our brains contain billions of neurons linked through trillions of synaptic connections.
    — William Herkewitz, Popular Mechanics, 26 Nov. 2015
  • At the same time, delta waves seem to degrade memories, perhaps by weakening brain connections in some form of synaptic downscaling.
    — Quanta Magazine, 24 Oct. 2019
  • This coating, made of a substance called myelin, protects our nerves and speeds up those vital electrical pulses moving from one neuron to the next, kissing across synaptic gaps in a brisk burst of chemicals.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 27 June 2018
  • Not completely away, but in a synaptic cabinet beneath my amygdala.
    — Abby Ellin, Marie Claire, 8 Jan. 2019
  • Think of this synaptic plasticity as the mechanism by which the strength of information flow in these tiny gaps among brain cells is manipulated.
    — Husseini Manji, Scientific American, 14 Sep. 2021
  • But the question still remains of how the arrival time of neural impulses at each synaptic relay point in complex neural networks is established.
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 18 Nov. 2019
  • That is, the more correlated the activity of adjacent neurons, the stronger the synaptic connections between them.
    — Quanta Magazine, 18 Feb. 2021
  • If cortical neurons get a lot of conversation from one eye and none from the other eye, axons representing the first eye grab all the synaptic spaces on the cortical neurons.
    — Quanta Magazine, 24 Mar. 2020
  • New and improved brain cells and connections Until the 1960s, scientists believed that the number of neurons and synaptic connections in the human brain were finite and that, once damaged, these brain cells could not be replaced.
    — Seena Mathew, Quartz, 31 July 2021
  • These molecules were transcribed from genes involved in synaptic formation that are under-edited in autistic brains and further showed that FMRP1 is required to edit those sites.
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 21 Dec. 2018
  • But there is something wonderful in the synaptic nimbleness with which people nowadays can plug in all these holes and create a pretty accurate whole other person.
    — Allie Briggs, refinery29.com, 28 Mar. 2018
  • On a steamy afternoon in August, the grounds buzzed with families experiencing a synaptic sugar rush.
    — New York Times, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Backpropagation is a method for updating the synaptic weights to descend that gradient.
    — Quanta Magazine, 18 Feb. 2021
  • The materialist interpretation is that consciousness and the mind aren’t separate from the brain, but rather are products of the brain—of neuronal, synaptic and other activity.
    — WSJ, 20 Dec. 2020
  • Though the biology of depression and addiction is complex, people with these diseases tend to lose some synaptic connections in their prefrontal cortex.
    — Robert F. Service, Science | AAAS, 9 Dec. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'synaptic.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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