When I started working on this project, I came across an electron microscope photo of myelin. It's not a great image in the usual sense of the word: it's grainy and blurred. But I like looking at it, because you can see each individual wrap, like the layers in a cliff face or the growth rings of a tree. Each wrap of myelin is a unique tracing of some past event. Perhaps that wrap was caused by a coach's pointer; perhaps that one by a parent's encouraging glance; perhaps that one by hearing a song they loved. In the whorls of myelin resides a person's secret history, the flow of interactions
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