This is out of my curriculum, but I just started wondering when I drew the reaction of an aldehyde and a secondary amine.
What if the adjacent carbon next to the α-carbon (β-carbon) in the aldehyde molecule does not have any hydrogen bound to it? How would the acid regenerate?
Would it go further out of the carbon chain till it found a carbon with an accessible hydrogen? and would the π-bound then move towards the α-carbon?
My best regards.
(Pictures drawn in order to support what I mean)