When the brain is developing, the immune system is also developing, and both play a mutual role in each other’s maturation. It is also known that in the fetus in utero, there is a wash of hormones that bathe the fetus’s body and brain and greatly influence the growth of the immune system while these intricate neural networks are developing.
Depending on the metabolism of hormones in the mother and the baby, this process determines which hemisphere of the brain is to be dominant. This is where handedness comes into play.
Besides recognizing that there are complexities in a baby’s development, one has to wonder about the interplay of all these things. Isn’t the immune system like a soul when you think of the perfect balance of all of the events during the baby’s development that almost predict the future in so many ways: numerical ability, artistic creativeness, which hand or foot is dominant, allergies, autoimmunity, reading talent, stuttering, athletic ability, and many other things that the GGH hypothesized decades ago?
If you believe this to be true, as I do, this is the ultimate reason your biological soul requires such reverence—not just as your protector but the basis of your future.
As you contemplate all this, put on some Mozart and look at the great works of Leonardo da Vinci. He, like my patient Fritz, was a mirror writer. He also apparently had difficulties with the written word and could have been dyslexic, which is determined by incorrect spellings that create homophonic nonwords, such as writing “rane” instead of rain.
An article in the American Journal of Medicine argued that dyslexia could have channeled da Vinci’s focus into visual thinking and maybe was the undercurrent for his brilliance and creativity.
So next time you see images of the Mona Lisa or the Vitruvian Man, I invite you to think of the power of your immune system and your brain, and how marvelous this interaction is.