Week 19

Another week has drifted by and pickle floats on. Sweet Dilly P tips the scales at seven and one half ounces and might be as many as six inches long from cheeks to cheeks.

Not much larger than last week, and neither is mami, but with the cookies flowing in (Thanks Sue, Monica and Nikki!) at their current rate Kasha and I should soon be able to imitate the 'Natural Disasters' Tag Team partnership of Earthquake and Typhoon. Um, if you're not a dweeb, they were a duo of hefty wrestlers in the 1990s.

The fact that the pickle is not doubling in size every week belies some really amazing fetal growth and development. Last week the heart had me aflutter and now the pickle is blowing minds mentally!

By this week there is such progress in cerebral development that we've got things like lobes and hemispheres, which means processing in a variety of ways. Let's focus on the basics first. The brains of all developing animals have one thing in common: the primitive brain is the plain old, no-frills way to say it. You want Latin? You got it. The cerebellum is what the Romans would have said to mean "little brain." The coolest version I've come across, however, is "reptilian brain."

Wow.

All that this part of the brain does for all brain-having organisms is control the most basic functions. Remembering to breath, for example. By this week the primitive brain is helping the pickle to simulate breathing in utero by sucking the amniotic fluids into the chest and then exhaling them back out. You know, why leave for tomorrow what you can start today?

The lobes of the higher brain are also coming along nicely. The pickle is beginning to form the structures that will interpret what we call "the senses."

There's the Frontal Lobe (AKA the Mammal Brain) which will do the stuff that set us apart from the beasts: discerning future consequences of present actions is what it boils right down to. A tarted-up way to discuss this is to say that the frontal lobe processes the executive functions, thinking in terms of good and bad, and sorting/storing and recalling long-term memories. I am almost certain that this is the part of the brain where Guiness is turned into courage.


The Occipital Lobe is where we process visual input. I think it would be interesting to find a connection between the location of this lobe, its function, and the idiom 'eyes in the back of your head' but, alas, there is none.

The Parietal Lobe is nothing like what I thought it was. This is because I cannot spell. The other day an eight year old had to tell me that 'swollow' had an A in it. I was all, "HA HA HA, Wrong! Nice try, kid." Of course you know how it ended. Anyway, here's another example: I thought the Parietal Lobe of the brain was where Anti-social impulses were generated. And I thought this because of the word 'pariah' when actually Parietal is an anatomical term meaning "belonging to the wall" and has to do with the brain's proximity to the skull. Incidentally, this portion of the brain is related to coordination through visuospatial processing. As it turns out, it is Guiness that is responsible for anti-social impulses.

Do you like how I did that?

Now there's also the Temporal Lobe underneath all that other glop. Here there is some cool stuff going on like the conceptualizing of semantics both in terms of sight and speech. Makes you wonder how long humans have had Language if there is a part of the brain that devotes so much volume to semantics. Also, this is where long term memories and olfaction are operating. In a cruel twist of fate, it is also the potion of the brain beneath where I broke my skull that one time. And it makes sense that I lost my sense of smell for 8 months and to this very day have a useless memory.

The pickle's brain hemispheres are distinguishable by this week. Left and right brain is a wild concept. I'll summarize by way of ordered contrasting:

LEFT BRAIN

1)Sequential and Logical
2)Rational
3)Analytical
4)Objective
5)Considers Parts

RIGHT BRAIN

1)Random
2)Intuitive
3)Synthesizing
4)Subjective
5)Considers Wholes

They say that -in addition to our upbringing and all the accumulated experiences that befall a person- most of "who we are" can be credited to whichever hemisphere is dominant in our brain. And that little bit is already determined before birth. The pickle might be all logical in there, but there's just as good a shot that she or he is random. One day it'll all make sense.