March 27 Compassionate Living Tip from Interfaith Paths to Peace
Understanding the Importance of Interdependent Relationships
The Brain on Love
By DIANE ACKERMAN
Diane Ackerman on the the natural world, the world of human endeavor and connections between the two.
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.
Olimpia Zagnoli
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.
