Understanding Imprinting
The concept of imprinting originated about one century ago in the work of Konrad Lorenz (Nobel Prize 1973). Lorenz observed that a duck hatchling, when it first emerges from its shell, imprints on the first moving object. Thus, a hatchling exposed to a rolling ball will imprint on the ball as though the ball is its mother; and as it matures it will attempt to mate with a ball. The imprinting process in humans occurs before we are "hatched," during the period of growth in the womb. While the human brain is larger and more complex than that of a duck, the cellular level imprinting processes are similar.
The prenate's rapidly developing paleocortex records its shared experience with its mother, developing a foundational patterning written in a cellular language of several hundred different neurochemical messenger molecules. These patterns form the foundation of how we will perceive the world, creating foundational perceptual filters. Perceptual filters may be viewed as a "lens" through which we project our reality, and by which we move into activities and relationships that cause us to recreate variation of the foundational neurochemical patterning again and again throughout our lives.
PNRI recognize the importance of this foundational process in forming human behavior. However, most continue to dismiss the embryonic developmental period. Accordingly, there are few effective programs to alter foundational personality patterns originating from the first trimester of prenatal development.
PNRI theory holds that our foundational personality begins to develop along with the development of our brain and nervous system. To better understand this developmental process we will start at the beginning.
Within about ten to 20-minutes after the DNA (haploid) from the father's sperm meets the DNA (haploid) of the mother's ovum a unique combination is formed that is coded into the 3.5-billion base pairs of the fertilized egg (zygote). In less than one hour a mitotic spindle forms from microtubule strands inside of the zygote. The mitotic spindle attaches to the 23-pairs of chromosomes ("modules" of the DNA) and it pulls the 23 pairs of chromosomes apart as the single cell becomes two cells. The separated chromosome pairs then reconstitute themselves as a whole DNA strand and become the nucleus of two separate and identical cells.
This process repeats again as the two cells divide to become four identical cells. These four cells divide again to form eight identical cells. This process continues until the cell mass reaches 32 identical cells. At this point cells begin to differentiate and form the first neuronal tissue in what is called the neural plate. As the cells continue to divide the neural plate begins to form the neural tube. This neural tube extends toward the head and feet to form the spine and brain.
Soon after conception there is an intense cellular growth process that reaches a level of some 250,000 new neurons being generated every minute during the peak periods of cellular proliferation. This rapid growth is necessary to produce the 100-billion neurons and the trillion supporting cells (glial cells) that form the developed brain in the 40-weeks of pregnancy. This rapidly growing mass of neuronal cells is subject to prenatal imprinting from the mother's life experience.
The human embryo, shown to the left is eight weeks old. It is shown in its sack of amniotic fluid and is attached to the wall of the uterus by its umbilical cord and placenta. At seven weeks the five main divisions of the brain are visible. However, the basic neuronal cells of the paleocortex begin to form as the first differentiated cells soon after conception. At three weeks the neural tube begins to form, and this rapidly forms into the brain, spinal column, and nervous system.
