Men is like an onion

"Đàn ông giống như một củ hành tây. Muốn thấy được trái tim của hành tây thì phải bóc từng lớp, từng lớp vỏ bên ngoài ra. Mỗi lần bóc vỏ như thế sẽ khiến bạn phải chảy nước mắt nhưng khi bóc tới lớp vỏ cuối cùng mới phát hiện ra rằng: Hành tây không có tim!" 


This is disturbingly true to some people

The Brain on Love 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.

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.

My senior chapel talk

Ly Harriet Bui’12

Senior chapel talk

One beautiful morning, I was staring at the bulletin board searching for something new when I saw a piece of wrinkled paper attached to a soft surface wall. There were names written carelessly on it. The paper looked quite damaged that I assumed it was not important at all. After I found out it was actually the sign-up sheet for senior chapel talk; my morning became less beautiful. I did not expect it to come that quickly. Adding to my surprise, names occupied all the bottom rows of the sign-up sheet with later dates. I had no room left to squeeze in. So as you can see, I am among one of the earliest seniors standing here in front all of you, but I was only a victim of lateness.

Repeating junior year twice, meaning being late for college does not seem to be an interesting idea. According to Vietnamese traditional belief, a girl who studies for too long will not get a husband. Despite the warning, I decided to take risk and most importantly take time to fully grow into a person I want to be. Thus with my parents’ support, I left home, turning a new page of my life.

Coming to VVS, I started my second junior year.

At 11pm on 23^rd of August 2009, a 17 year old girl managed to pull her two heavy suitcases on the red rock dirt. I was tired, nervous like a fish out of water because my two feet were standing by themselves on a land half a globe away from home for the first time. As an only child used to the warmth of family, I clung to the thought that I could never trust anybody but my parents. I did not expect to develop any new bonding relationships in a country of individualism. In my opinion, relationships born within individualism were connected only by hydrogen bonds, easily formed, hence, easily broken. I never knew that there would be a friendship I was going to pack with me wherever I went later on.

“Ly, the flight should have been very tiring, eat some ice cream. It is very delicious”. A sweet Vietnamese voice with a Southern accent came to my ears when I reached Sears. A girl ran out to welcome me, holding a paper bowl of ice cream, my most favorite. I was surprised how a stranger might have such a friendly manner. That bowl of ice cream relieved my nerves. I will never forget its taste, a mixture of vanilla and chocolate, cool and sweet. It was how I met Eveline. Her sweet, caring manner has kept me company from that moment on. It also changed my view about relationships with people. Whenever I was lost among the seas of indifferent glances, she pulled me out of sadness. Whenever my feet could not carry themselves due to the heavy weight of homework, quizzes and exams; she spent time keeping me caught up with classes as much as she could. Her compliments about little things I could do such as my help for her terrible drawings in Spanish homework contributed to my self-confidence. Together, we went through thick and thin. She was the only one that did not express any surprise when I decided to repeat my junior year the third time. She was very supportive indeed.  People call her “a beast” because of 3.97 GPA. To me she is simply an Eveline, a coffee addict, a cake lover who got caught taking showers during study hour. Gradually through Eveline, I learnt to open myself up and reached out for people around me.

As a result, not only did I find a true friend, I also fell in love. He was 15 and I was 17. He did not bring me ice cream. Instead he came to me with three magical words “I love you”. After one minute of awkward silence, my reaction was “Are you sure?” From that moment on, each day felt less heavy even though my heart carried one more person rather than myself. Eating a delicious cupcake, I remembered saving another one for him. When the weather turned cold, I wondered if he was warm enough. This happiness I treasured was hidden away from my parents. The love for their daughter told them to prevent me from being in relationships with boys because boys were like bombs. We never knew when they were going to explode. The same situation happens to most of my Vietnamese friends who conceal love letters in a little corner of a drawer locked tight. The fact that I fell in love with a younger boy would have been a shock not only to my parents but also to most of my Vietnamese friends. I understand parents only want to ensure good futures for their children. However, there are things that can only be learnt in real life not through textbooks. Among them are relationships.

Falling in love was hard; falling out of love was even harder. The ends of beautiful memories are always painful. Until now, I still have a habit of keeping everything coming my ways: books from kindergarten, a broken doll from grandma and even a candy-wrapper from someone I liked 10 years ago.  I ate the candy, of course. I appreciate every single thing and person entering my little world so I have a tendency to hold on to them. This has turned out to be my weakness. The break up forced me to realize that I was too stubborn to let go. Thus it hurt even more. When tears have gone, a scar has been left behind. The scar does not make me regret. It is there to remind me about what I have been through. Sadly each of us learns to build better relationships from previous broken ones. Only by being vulnerable, was I able to grow stronger. 

Lateness turns out not to be a bad thing.. Now as I looked back, I do not see it as lateness but opportunities to learn and grow. If I have rushed to move on to college, I would have missed such a precious friendship with Eveline. I would not have had a chance to develop and understand such a complex and delicate emotion as love. In the end, life is more about journeys taken rather than destinations. None of us really certain about what will come tomorrow. Why don’t just be present?

Next time, if I happen to come across the sign-up sheet for senior chapel talk again, I will give the wrinkled paper full of names on the bottom rows such a big smile. The smile would make two corners of the lips touch the eyes. I will be very happy to be among the latest ones that signed up for it because by that moment, my speech will have been done