[Verse 1] Flechsig traced the sheaths in silver ink, Myelin creeping slow, in no rush to link, Sensory islands wire up first, bright and keen, While parietal coastline stays half-unseen, Last invited to the myelogenetic feast, Association cortex, patient in the east. [Chorus] S then P then P again, Sensorimotor, Parietal, Prefrontal brain, Grey matter packs its bags and goes, Back to front is the way maturity flows, Late to wire but worth the wait, Parietal's patience makes the network great. [Verse 2] Gogtay watched with PNAS eyes, Grey matter loss like tides that rise, After the motor strip has had its turn, Before the frontal lobes get their concern, Shaw charted thickness, cresting late in youth, A hill in childhood, cortex telling truth, Huttenlocher counted synapses like stars, An efflorescence — blooming thick before the carving scars. [Chorus] S then P then P again, Sensorimotor, Parietal, Prefrontal brain, Grey matter packs its bags and goes, Back to front is the way maturity flows, Late to wire but worth the wait, Parietal's patience makes the network great. [Verse 3] Lebel followed water drifting through the wires, Fractional anisotropy climbing ever higher, Superior longitudinal, arcuate's slow bend, Tightening past your twenties, with no early end, Every spiral of the myelin a firmer twist, Reading fluency and working memory, hand in fist. [Verse 4] Fair redrew the graph from clique to web, Local huddles fading as the long lines spread, Parietal nodes let go their short embrace, Joining frontoparietal control, finding their place, Default mode calling softly from afar — A palimpsest of circuits, old traced beneath the new, there they are. [Bridge] Count on fingers, prefrontal cortex pays the toll, Years go by, the ledger shifts, parietal takes control, Rivera's scans reveal the handoff, clean and slow, Left parietal cortex becomes the place the numbers go, Strategy retires, retrieval takes the lead, The brain outsources arithmetic to the place it needs to feed. [Verse 5] Casey tracked the climbing curve of inhibitory might, Frontal control maturing late into the night, Sowell mapped the sulci deepening with age, Parietal folds turning each new page, Spatial maps and number lines converge and bend, Posterior parietal cortex, architect and friend, Attention's spotlight swinging wide then narrow still, Learning where to point itself is a slowly won skill. [Chorus] S then P then P again, Sensorimotor, Parietal, Prefrontal brain, Grey matter packs its bags and goes, Back to front is the way maturity flows, Late to wire but worth the wait, Parietal's patience makes the network great. [Outro] Myelin late, but never behind, Tracts still tightening, sharpening mind, From local huddle to a far-flung friend, Parietal's story has no early end.
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