Unregenerate Humanity -edit2

[dukealien]

edit2;

Unregenerate Humanity


We learn that unlike rats’ or crows’
our adult neurons never split
to generate new cells:  mind grows
by forming fresh connections.  It
relies not on mouse-cleverness
to learn a maze, imprinting on
rejuvenant forgetfulness,
but rules cemented from its dawn
of consciousness to solve each maze
and then to build them.

               Minds are thus
conservative, each rodent craze
for novelty a heedless fuss.
In time, our aging neurons die–
more human, that, than multiply.

---

Thanks to both critics.  @Richard - tried to implement all or most of your fine suggestions.  @alexorande - why tetrameter?  Just because... the subject seemed too light for IP until the final couplet-- and by then it was too late    .  Big and pointless explain below.

This harks back to a situation in bioscience.  For many years, following some (by now primitive, but exacting) research, it was "settled science" that human neurons do not divide.  (It was not known until recently that it's the connections that multiply, not the cells - research on giant sea slugs led to this discovery.)

Then, in the 80s (I believe it was), more sophisticated research showed that brain cells *do* divide.  This discovery resulted principally from experiments on rats; carry-over to humans was mostly presumed and confirmed in only the most cursory manner.  From this new settled science, vast quantities of textbook and nutrition text flowed - what to eat to keep those little gray cells dividing happily, and how this shows people are just like what were formerly called "lower" animals where it counted.

But lately, further research has shown that the situation is more nuanced:  human brain cells do divide in youth, but in maturity this ceases:  human adult brain cells become "immortal" in the sense that they don't divide (not that they never die).  This suggests, when taken with the research showing how connections form between brain cells, that human "mind" is founded on retaining all those connections intact (barring death of the "swtichboard" neurons) and adding to them rather than adding cells as (yes) lower, unminded animals do.  It also reflects the observed path of maturity:  curious, learning, somewhat feral childhood maturing into set-in-its-ways but rational, mindful adulthood.

This congruence with cultural wisdom makes me a little nervous:  are researchers still in thrall to preconceptioins as the adult-cells-divide bunch were?  Those fought tooth and nail against the new no-adult-neurogenesis science, and you can still find textbooks and nutrition advice pushing "brain food" to help adult brain cells "keep dividing" instead of keeping those "immortal" cells healthy and alive.  The defeated were not gracious, and some still deny.  It's a pattern not limited to bioscience.

And that's where my fourteen lines came from.