Yearly archive for 2015

Kittens that are, between their third week and their third month of life, kept in a room lined only with horizontal stripes will, as adults, have no trouble romping from table to floor, but they will bump into table and chair legs. They behave throughout their lives as if vertical objects do not exist.

White-crowned sparrow chicks must hear their species’ song between their tenth and fiftieth day of life. It is only during this critical period of time that they can tape and store the parental songs in their brain — and so be able to reproduce the song later in life.

I have always been fascinated with the brain. The rest of the human body is ruled by the brain — it commands every sensation, every movement, every thought, every memory, and every dream. Sir Charles Sherrington wrote that within this “enchanted loom millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern, though never an abiding one.”

My interest in this instrument was intensified during my son Caleb’s seventh grade year, when he and another boy decided to do their science project on a comparative study of the brains of various animals vs. the human brain. So they (really, we) began. They went to many butcher shops and collected the brains of rats, sheep, dogs, cats, pigs, and cows.