via NYTimes.com:
by Diane Ackerman
A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.
All relationships change the brain — but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self.
Every great love affair begins with a scream. At birth, the brain starts blazing new neural pathways based on its odyssey in an alien world. An infant is steeped in bright, buzzing, bristling sensations, raw emotions and the curious feelings they unleash, weird objects, a flux of faces, shadowy images and dreams — but most of all a powerfully magnetic primary caregiver whose wizardry astounds.
Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose. Wordlessly, relying on the heart’s semaphores, the mother says all an infant needs to hear, communicating through eyes, face and voice. Thanks to advances in neuroimaging, we now have evidence that a baby’s first attachments imprint its brain. The patterns of a lifetime’s behaviors, thoughts, self-regard and choice of sweethearts all begin in this crucible.
We used to think this was the end of the story: first heredity, then the brain’s engraving mental maps in childhood, after which you’re pretty much stuck with the final blueprint.
But as a wealth of imaging studies highlight, the neural alchemy continues throughout life as we mature and forge friendships, dabble in affairs, succumb to romantic love, choose a soul mate. The body remembers how that oneness with Mother felt, and longs for its adult equivalent.
As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships. Daniel J. Siegel and Allan N. Schore, colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, recently discussed groundbreaking work in the field at a conference on the school’s campus. It’s not that caregiving changes genes; it influences how the genes express themselves as the child grows. Dr. Siegel, a neuropsychiatrist, refers to the indelible sense of “feeling felt” that we learn as infants and seek in romantic love, a reciprocity that remodels the brain’s architecture and functions.
Does it also promote physical well-being? “Scientific studies of longevity, medical and mental health, happiness and even wisdom,” Dr. Siegel says, “point to supportive relationships as the most robust predictor of these positive attributes in our lives across the life span.”
The supportive part is crucial. Loving relationships alter the brain the most significantly.
Just consider how much learning happens when you choose a mate. Along with thrilling dependency comes glimpsing the world through another’s eyes; forsaking some habits and adopting others (good or bad); tasting new ideas, rituals, foods or landscapes; a slew of added friends and family; a tapestry of physical intimacy and affection; and many other catalysts, including a tornadic blast of attraction and attachment hormones — all of which revamp the brain.
When two people become a couple, the brain extends its idea of self to include the other; instead of the slender pronoun “I,” a plural self emerges who can borrow some of the other’s assets and strengths. The brain knows who we are. The immune system knows who we’re not, and it stores pieces of invaders as memory aids. Through lovemaking, or when we pass along a flu or a cold sore, we trade bits of identity with loved ones, and in time we become a sort of chimera. We don’t just get under a mate’s skin, we absorb him or her.
Love is the best school, but the tuition is high and the homework can be painful. As imaging studies by the U.C.L.A. neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger show, the same areas of the brain that register physical pain are active when someone feels socially rejected. That’s why being spurned by a lover hurts all over the body, but in no place you can point to. Or rather, you’d need to point to the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in the brain, the front of a collar wrapped around the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers zinging messages between the hemispheres that register both rejection and physical assault.
Whether they speak Armenian or Mandarin, people around the world use the same images of physical pain to describe a broken heart, which they perceive as crushing and crippling. It’s not just a metaphor for an emotional punch. Social pain can trigger the same sort of distress as a stomachache or a broken bone.
But a loving touch is enough to change everything. James Coan, a neuroscientist at the University of Virginia, conducted experiments in 2006 in which he gave an electric shock to the ankles of women in happy, committed relationships. Tests registered their anxiety before, and pain level during, the shocks.
Then they were shocked again, this time holding their loving partner’s hand. The same level of electricity produced a significantly lower neural response throughout the brain. In troubled relationships, this protective effect didn’t occur. If you’re in a healthy relationship, holding your partner’s hand is enough to subdue your blood pressure, ease your response to stress, improve your health and soften physical pain. We alter one another’s physiology and neural functions.
However, it’s not all sub rosa. One can decide to be a more attentive and compassionate partner, mindful of the other’s motives, hurts and longings. Breaking old habits isn’t easy, since habits are deeply ingrained neural shortcuts, a way of slurring over details without having to dwell on them. Couples often choose to rewire their brains on purpose, sometimes with a therapist’s help, to ease conflicts and strengthen their at-one-ness.
While they were both in the psychology department of Stony Brook University, Bianca Acevedo and Arthur Aron scanned the brains of long-married couples who described themselves as still “madly in love.” Staring at a picture of a spouse lit up their reward centers as expected; the same happened with those newly in love (and also with cocaine users). But, in contrast to new sweethearts and cocaine addicts, long-married couples displayed calm in sites associated with fear and anxiety. Also, in the opiate-rich sites linked to pleasure and pain relief, and those affiliated with maternal love, the home fires glowed brightly.
A happy marriage relieves stress and makes one feel as safe as an adored baby. Small wonder “Baby” is a favorite adult endearment. Not that romantic love is an exact copy of the infant bond. One needn’t consciously regard a lover as momlike to profit from the parallels. The body remembers, the brain recycles and restages.
So how does this play out beyond the lab? I saw the healing process up close after my 74-year-old husband, who is also a writer, suffered a left-hemisphere stroke that wiped out a lifetime of language. All he could utter was “mem.” Mourning the loss of our duet of decades, I began exploring new ways to communicate, through caring gestures, pantomime, facial expressions, humor, play, empathy and tons of affection — the brain’s epitome of a safe attachment. That, plus the admittedly eccentric home schooling I provided, and his diligent practice, helped rewire his brain to a startling degree, and in time we were able to talk again, he returned to writing books, and even his vision improved. The brain changes with experience throughout our lives; it’s in loving relationships of all sorts — partners, children, close friends — that brain and body really thrive.
During idylls of safety, when your brain knows you’re with someone you can trust, it needn’t waste precious resources coping with stressors or menace. Instead it may spend its lifeblood learning new things or fine-tuning the process of healing. Its doors of perception swing wide open. The flip side is that, given how vulnerable one then is, love lessons — sweet or villainous — can make a deep impression. Wedded hearts change everything, even the brain.
SIDESHOW
For a nickel, you can take a picture of me standing just so in front of a wooden board with a heart painted on it.
For a dime, you can take a picture with me, you squatting behind and peeking through like I’m one of those cardboard cut-outs of an “Indian Chief” or a unicorn or some other supposedly mythical creature.
When you offer a quarter, we move to the tent, dim-lit and dusty, where I sit on the low quilt-covered bed and pat the space beside me. You are nervous. “Will it hurt? I mean, will it hurt you?” I shake my head. “It never hurts. Not anymore.” And then I take your hand and guide it up towards the hole in my chest. You tremble for a second as you reach through me, wiggle your fingers around behind my back, disbelieving.
“Where is your heart?” you ask. “How do you live without your heart?” I don’t know how to answer, so I say, “It’s amazing the things you can learn to live without.”
—Lauren Wheeler
Ten simple ways to fall in love, again:
Enjoy memories. We know that our emotions are connected to thoughts, so when we reflect on good, happy memories we recreate the emotions and feelings in our body/mind that went along with the experience. Our great feelings are associated with those we shared the experiences, so while we don’t want to live in the past, enjoying our memories together is a simple way to enjoy our partners.
Plan for the future and share your dreams. Having something to look forward to is one of the keys to living a happy life. We humans seem to need goals, dreams, hope, and a purpose. Without them we tend to get stuck; life may seem boring or purposeless. When we share our dreams, work toward our goals and envision a future with our partner, we tend to work toward this future. Again, this doesn’t mean we don’t live in the present and enjoy the moment, it just means we hold our dreams in our hearts.
Live in the present. Of course this comes next. Enjoy the moment. Take each second of beauty and expand it, bask in it, allow it to fill your soul. Don’t let even one minute of joy, laughter, or pleasure be taken for granted. Allow yourself to treasure the time you have with your partner; look for those moments of quiet peace, or vibrant joy, or wild excitement. If they are few and far between, make more of them!
Demonstrate appreciation. Show your partner you care. Tell your spouse you love him. Do everything you can to make sure your beloved knows (doesn’t have to guess), that you adore and cherish her. Don’t assume they know and don’t think that because you mentioned it a few years ago they remember.
Look for the good in your partner. Remember when you first met? You saw nothing wrong with your significant other. She was fabulous; he was perfect. Of course in time we tend to see a little more of each other and that impression may fade just a tad so consciously find (not just look) for the great qualities and traits of your mate. Don’t just come up with a thing or two, how about write down a hundred wonderful things about your partner, then share it!
Engage in new activities. Humans tend to thrive on new experiences. There is something innate in us where we want to learn, grow, and expand our knowledge, understanding, or talents. It seems to me that we often get into ruts with our partners, doing the same things over and over again when one of the great ways to get out of the rut and to put some vibrancy into the relationship is to get out and do something new. Try something really unusual, or out of the ordinary for a change!
Have lots of fun. It is so much to laugh together. I’m thinking it is nearly impossible to not love those who make us laugh and those whose days we can brighten. Lighten up, find the humor in everything, and have lots of fun.
Work on projects together. Be a team! Find something that you and your partner can create together. When a couple is working in unison to bring forth something beneficial to their family, their neighborhood, their community, the world, or even animals, they can create a bond that is incredibly powerful. When working toward an important goal, we tend to see the greatness in each other, find ways to support one another, and have a deeper sense of the importance and strength of the relationship.
Remember what is truly important in life. Think about what is important in the long term, not what will give you a moment of pleasure. Reflect on how you want your life to be remembered when you are ninety years old. Ponder what you truly value in life. Remind yourself of your core personal values or morals. It might be that you move from wanting more excitement in your life right now to holding a desire for true and lifelong devotion and love.
Give attention and support your beloved. It sounds strange but we know that the more we give, care, or serve another the more we love them; NOT the more they love us but the more we love them. We love those to whom we give love and care and attention and service. The more you give the more you love. Cool!
Don’t give up. So long as you believe the relationship is worth saving, so long as you want the relationship to be healed I hold it as possible. Remember relationships are not the fantasy of perfect bliss for eterntiy. They are a dynamic process that may have some low and high moments; they have their struggles and challenges. The key to keeping the relationship alive is to move through the problems and not let them take over your life and your love!
—- jennifer jones
I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.
—- Variation on the word Sleep, Margaret Atwood
When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams.
That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships.
I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you.
Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing?
I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms.
—- The Secret, Jeffrey McDaniel
We grow, including the intellectual and the spiritual, without being deeply aware of it. In fact, some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is what is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or person who explained it to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. I remember the waves of anxiety that used to engulf me at different periods in my life, always manifesting itself in physical disorders (sleeplessness, for instance) and how frightened I was because I did not understand how this was possible.
With age and experience, you will be happy to know, growth becomes a conscious, recognized process. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.
— Alice Walker, Living By The Word
“I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love. ”
― Dave Eggers, What is the What
In bed all day. Late in the afternoon, husband comes into the bedroom with a vest on and a towel over his arm. As I pull the covers off my face he hands me a hand written menu titled cafe de mi amor. On it lists the possible items he can whip up in our kitchen. I love my husband more every day. 9 years in and so many more to enjoy. How did I get so lucky.
