Every brain is unique: early bonds, chance and development shape who we become
September 28, 2026 · 28 min read
Allan Schore traces adult relationships to right-brain bonds in infancy, Immordino-Yang shows a toddler's feelings growing into ideas, and Linden highlights early experience and random developmental noise. It explains why people genuinely experience the world differently and why early relationships matter so much.
The rules, numbers and steps worth keeping in front of you.
- Schore: the right hemisphere dominates brain growth from late pregnancy through the second year.
- Schore: caregivers regulate a baby's arousal through face, voice and touch; this becomes self-regulation.
- Every caregiver misreads the baby sometimes; repair is what teaches regulation.
- Insecure patterns: avoidant (relies on self), anxious (relies on others), disorganized (shuts down under stress).
- Schore: adult relationships and therapy run on the same early right-brain circuits.
- Schore: change comes through close, vulnerable relationships, not insight alone.
- Immordino-Yang: the feeling stays; growing knowledge turns it into ideas, stories and values.
- Immordino-Yang: imagination and perspective-taking shut down when people feel unsafe.
- Linden: who we are is heritability interacting with experience, filtered through random development.
- Linden: Big Five traits are roughly 50% heritable; family upbringing explains almost none of the rest.
- Linden: less outdoor time in the first five years makes nearsightedness more likely.
- Linden: two people differ in about 30% of odor receptors; perception is inference.
- Linden doubts biological inheritance of trauma across generations; effects within one pregnancy are well established.
- For PTSD, borderline personality disorder or depression, see a qualified clinician; don't self-diagnose from attachment categories.
This is the short form. The full insight has every expert's reasoning, their own words and the sources.