Where you are now depends on where you've been

From Studies Show Talking With Infants Shapes Basis of Ability to Think by Sandra Blakeslee.

The brain is a self-organizing system, Dr. Thelen said, whose many parts co-operate to produce coherent behavior. There is no master program pulling it together but rather the parts self-organize. '"What we know about these systems is that they are very sensitive to initial conditions,"' Dr. Thelen said. "Where you are now depends on where you've been."