[Verse 1] Before the eyelids ever crack a seam, the retina's already scripting out a dream— waves of sparks roll across the inner dark, no light required to strike the organizing spark. Ripples drift from cell to cell inside the womb, wiring up the wiring before there's even room, a rehearsal in the darkness, a map before the show, the eye hasn't opened, but the circuit starts to know. [Chorus] Cells that fire together, wire together, that's the rule, use the circuit or you'll lose it, nature's oldest school, sculpting every synapse on a living loom, wiring by experience, shaping room by room. [Verse 2] Hubel and Wiesel stitched one kitten's eye, sutured shut before the critical window passed it by, cortex columns, once split fair and square, leaned toward the open eye, abandoned the other's share. Ocular dominance shifted like a tide, proof that seeing shapes the wiring deep inside— Stockholm called their names in nineteen eighty-one, a prize for watching how the brain's own maps are spun. [Chorus] Cells that fire together, wire together, that's the rule, use the circuit or you'll lose it, nature's oldest school, sculpting every synapse on a living loom, wiring by experience, shaping room by room. [Verse 3] But the window doesn't hang forever wide— PV interneurons mature and step inside, casting perineuronal nets like chain mail knit, locking circuits down once they finally fit. That's the closing bell on the critical phase, synapses set hard in something like a frozen haze— open up too early, or you'll miss the chance, timing is the currency behind this whole romance. [Bridge] Meanwhile, deep beneath the sculpting and the pruning war, Gina Turrigiano found a thermostat in store: synaptic scaling, turning volume knobs just right, too much firing? dial it down to a quieter night. Too quiet? every synapse gets a little lift, keeping neurons steady through the critical drift, balance over chaos, homeostasis sings, stability's the ballast while the whole circuit swings. [Verse 4] No blueprint labels every single wire in place, no architect's hand tracing out the finished space, just local rules repeated, cell by cell by cell, activity's the sculptor ringing out the morphing bell. Patterns rise from simple, whispered local code, columns and maps self-assemble down the road— order out of static, structure out of noise, the brain builds its own wiring using living toys. [Chorus] Cells that fire together, wire together, that's the rule, use the circuit or you'll lose it, nature's oldest school, sculpting every synapse on a living loom, wiring by experience, shaping room by room. [Outro] So fire together, wire together, watch the pattern grow, open eyes and open windows, that's the way to know, scale it steady, net it shut, let the circuit find its place— wiring by experience, carving out your inner space.
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