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Baby's Brain
The Secret Life of the Brain
By Richard Restak, M.D.
A baby's brain weighs less than a pound. Yet from within its tiny folds will emerge a universe of meaning: emotions, ideas, memories, dreams -- indeed, everything that makes us human will find a home here. At the moment of conception the brain is secret, indeed. All that can be observed under a microscope is the single cell that resulted from the penetration of the father's sperm into the mother's egg. But within that tiny cell, invisible to the naked eye, resides the DNA blueprint that will guide the construction of the entire human body. And that construction gets off to an early start.
After an initial series of rapid multiplications, the resulting cells -- many hundreds -- arrange themselves into a hollow sphere surrounding a central cavity. The formation of this hollow sphere marks life's first developmental step.
Next, at about two weeks after sperm meets egg, the embryo undergoes a massive rearrangement that transforms a uniform ball of cells into a multicelled organism with a recognizable body plan. This process of differentiation starts with an indentation of the cellular sphere. A portion of the sphere then moves inward through the indentation, resulting in a three-layered structure: An outside layer (the ectoderm), a middle layer (the mesoderm), and an inner layer (the endoderm). From these three layers will emerge distinct bodily structures.
The endoderm gives rise to the gut and many of its major organs; the mesoderm forms the body's muscles, skeleton, connective tissue, the heart and circulatory system, and the urinary tract an
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