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I was offered a position as associate professor of medicine
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and chief of scientific visualization
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at Yale University
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in the department of medicine.
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And my job was to write many of the algorithms and code
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for NASA to do virtual surgery
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in preparation for the astronauts going into deep spaceflight,
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so they could be kept in robotic pods.
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One of the fascinating things about what we were actually working on
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is that we were seeing, using new kinds of scanning technologies,
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things that had just never been seen before --
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I mean, not only in disease management,
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but also things that allowed us to see things about the body
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that just made you marvel.
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I remember one of the first times we were looking at collagen.
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And your entire body, everything --
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your hair, skin, bone, nails --
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everything is made of collagen.
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And it's a kind of rope-like structure
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that twirls and swirls like this.
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And the only place that collagen changes its structure
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is in the cornea of your eye.
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In your eye,
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it becomes a grid formation,
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and therefore, it becomes transparent, as opposed to opaque.
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So perfectly organized a structure,
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it was hard not to attribute divinity to it.
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Because we kept on seeing this over and over and over again
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in different parts of the body.
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One of the opportunities I had
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was one person was working on a really interesting
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micromagnetic resonance imaging machine with the NIH.
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And what we were going to do
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was scan a new project
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on the development of the fetus from conception to birth
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using these kinds of new technologies.
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So I wrote the algorithms in code,
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and he built the hardware -- Paul Lauterbur --
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then went onto win the Nobel Prize for inventing the MRI.
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I got the data.
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And I'm going to show you a sample of the piece,
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"From Conception to Birth."
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(Music)
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Video text: "From Conception to Birth"
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Oocyte
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Sperm
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Egg Inseminated
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24 Hours: Baby's first division
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The fertilized ovum divides a few hours after fusion ...
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And divides anew every 12 to 15 hours.
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Early Embryo
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Yolk sack still feeding Baby.
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25 Days: Heart chamber developing
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32 Days: Arms & hands are developing
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36 Days: Beginning of the primitive vertabrae
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These weeks are the period of the most rapid development of the fetus.
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If the fetus continues to grow at this speed for the entire nine months,
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it would be 1.5 tons at birth.
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45 Days
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Embryo's heart is beating twice as fast as the mother's.
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51 Days
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52 Days: Developing retina, nose and fingers
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The fetus' continual movement in the womb
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is necessary for muscular and skeletal growth.
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12 Weeks: Indifferent penis --
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girl or boy yet to be determined
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8 Months
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Delivery: the expulsion stage
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The moment of birth
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(Applause)
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Alexander Tsiaras: Thank you.
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But as you can see,
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when you actually start working on this data,
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it's pretty spectacular.
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And as we kept on scanning more and more,
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working on this project,
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looking at these two simple cells
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that have this kind of unbelievable machinery
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that will become the magic of you.
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And as we kept on working on this data,
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looking at small clusters of the body,
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these little pieces of tissue
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that were a trophoblast coming off of a blastocyst,
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all of a sudden burrowing itself into the side of the uterus,
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saying, "I'm here to stay."
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All of a sudden having conversation and communications
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with the estrogens, the progesterones,
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saying, "I'm here to stay, plant me,"
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building this incredible trilinear fetus
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that becomes, within 44 days,
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something that you can recognize,
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and then at nine weeks
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is really kind of a little human being.
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The marvel of this information:
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How do we actually have this biological mechanism
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inside our body
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to actually see this information?
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I'm going to show you something pretty unique.
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Here's a human heart at 25 [weeks].
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It's just basically two strands.
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And like this magnificent origami,
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cells are developing
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at one million cells per second at four weeks,
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as it's just folding on itself.
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Within five weeks, you can start to see the early atrium and the early ventricles.
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Six weeks, these folds are now beginning
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with the papilla on the inside of the heart
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actually being able to pull down
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each one of those valves in your heart
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until you get a mature heart --
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and then basically the development of the entire human body.
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The magic of the mechanisms
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inside each genetic structure
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saying exactly where that nerve cell should go --
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the complexity of these mathematical models
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of how these things are indeed done
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are beyond human comprehension.
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Even though I am a mathematician,
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I look at this with marvel
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of how do these instruction sets
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not make these mistakes
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as they build what is us?
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It's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity.
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Then you start to take a look at adult life.
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Take a look at this little tuft of capillaries.
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It's just a tiny sub-substructure, microscopic.
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But basically by the time you're nine months and you're given birth,
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you have almost 60,000 miles of vessels
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inside your body.
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I mean, and only one mile is visible.
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59,999 miles
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that are basically bringing nutrients and taking waste away.
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The complexity of building that within a single system
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is, again, beyond any comprehension
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or any existing mathematics today.
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And that instruction set,
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from the brain to every other part of the body --
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look at the complexity of the folding.
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Where does this intelligence
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of knowing that a fold can actually hold more information,
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so as you actually watch the baby's brain grow --
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and this is one of the things that we're doing right now.
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We're actually doing the launch of two new studies
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of actually scanning babies' brains from the moment they're born.
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Every six months until they're six years old --
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we're going to be doing actually to about 250 children --
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watching exactly how the gyri and the sulci of the brains fold
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to see how this magnificent development
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actually turns into memories and the marvel that is us.
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And it's not just our own existence,
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but how does the woman's body understand
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to have genetic structure that not only builds her own,
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but then has the understanding
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that allows her to become
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a walking immunological, cardiovascular system
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that basically is a mobile system
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that can actually nurture, treat this child with a kind of marvel
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that is beyond, again, our comprehension --
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the magic that is existence, that is us?
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Thank you.
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(Applause)