How ice hockey helped me to explain how unborn babies brains are built
In his 2022 book Zero to Birth, How the Human Brain is Built, developmental neurobiologist William Harris includes ice hockey analogies to describe how the body\u2019s most complicated organ develops in the womb, drawing on a 40-year career studying fruit fly, salamander, frog and fish embryos.
Harris, professor emeritus at Cambridge University, UK, played the sport growing up in Canada and is now a coach. \u201cA coach will have tryouts and select the best players for different positions,\u201d he says. \u201cThe brain does the same thing. Maybe two neurons try out for every position, one makes it that\u2019s a little bit better at communicating, and the other one doesn\u2019t, going through a process called apoptosis. The survivors have to last your whole life.\u201d
Harris highlights some differences between human and animal brains, (cerebral cortex size, for example, and how newborn babies are hard wired to understand and develop speech). Writing the book, he believes, made him respect human and animal brains even more. \u201cProbably our brains are the most unique things about us. We have unique faces, but our brains are even more unique. You just can\u2019t see them,\u201d he says.
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