In 1901, a schoolteacher in Rome named Maria Montessori noticed that children in her observation classroom would repeat the same cylinder-block puzzle up to forty times in a sitting, and her field notes on that repetition became the basis for what developmental neuroscientists now call myelination t

In 1907, Maria Montessori clocked a child fitting wooden cylinders into their sockets forty-four times without stopping. Modern neuroscience has a name for what was happening inside her head. The post In 1901, a schoolteacher in Rome named Maria Montessori no…