This is Your Brain in Love

Remember those commercials from the 90s, the ones where they’d show you an egg, and say “this is your brain,” and then they’d crack it open and start it sizzling in a frying pan, and say “this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?” And the question would of course be “can I get a side of home fries with that that?”

The idea was that drugs fry your brain, and so the metaphor was over extended. So, in that vein, let’s look at more ways that your brain can get fried. And since Valentine’s day is a good three months away, let’s talk about love.

First up, this study, as reported by United Academics, which points out that “Romantic love and partnership is influenced by various substances, such as oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, serotonin, cortisol and testosterone.” If you’ve been reading The Great Brain Robbery, you may recognize some of those hormones. Like cortisol, the one that, amongst other things, makes you fat and rips your brain to shreds. Ain’t love great?

And there’s this article at BrainFacts.org, discussing the same and similar research, which says “In male prairie voles, the hormone arginine vasopressin, which is involved in aggression and territorial behavior, also appears to play an important role in pair-bonding.” Did you get that, guys? Love can make you aggressive. Or being aggressive can make you fall in love.

And finally, Discover Magazine’s Seriously Science column reports on a study that shows that, for straight men, just thinking about talking to women can make their brains take a dive.

Add it all up: love makes you fat, aggressive, and stupid.

Well, of course it does.

Of course it doesn’t. Love is too complex to be reduced to a few hormones, and the brain is too complex to be similarly reduced. We encourage you to actually read the above articles and abstracts, as the question of what love does to the brain (or, not to put to fine a point on it, for the brain) is still as mysterious as it is fascinating.

But nevermind that. Nevermind being rational and cautious about approaching the science of the brain. Nevermind reading these scientific articles in the spirit that they’re offered: with a healthy dose of discernment not to take the findings and draw unsubstantiated conclusions We’ve just read the Neuroskeptics guide on how to wave away doubt. And we’re approaching jazz-hands level here.

After all, if love makes s stupid, than being stupid means we deserve to be loved, right?

Talking Away Those Brain-Stress Blues

A man, middle-aged, reasonably healthy, walks into his living room. He’s a cleared an area in front of his gas-fireplace, and sits down, crossing his legs. He sits with god posture, eyes closed, arms loose in his lap. He takes a long deep breath, lets it out slowly. Another deep breath, another soothing exhalation. The man appears relaxed, at ease, content.

Blood flow in his cerebral prefontal cortices slowly decreases. He takes another breath, opens his mouth, and says “womba.”

He exhales. Breathes in. “womba choo dee latta.”

His posture straightens just slightly. He inhales. “womba choo dee matta fen, fenno chum de ganafed. Arrana sanipe. Arrana sanipe dee matta fen, womba choo dee matta fen ro sanipe, sanipe dreepa, sanipe dreepa saaaaaa….” He inhales, exhales, his lips murmuring more nonsense syllables.

None of the words come from any known language. He does this for an hour.

~~~

Glossolalia is the technical term for speaking tongues, a phenomena seemingly reserved for Pentecostal church meetings and Haitian voodoo rituals. Actually, glossolalia occurs all over the world in a diversity of cultures, including Japan, Egypt, and India. Adherents claim to be speaking a divine or lost language, either by channeling a holy spirituality or as the result of a gift from a god or ancestor.

But there’s more glossolalia than just nonsense syllables and church devotion. In 2006 a group of scientists studied the brains of those who could, at will, speak in tongues, and found that brain activity was different than for a control group. Another study, performed in 2010, found that people who spoke in tongues had lowers levels of the so-called “stress” hormone cortisol. This evidence suggests glossolalia is not merely a psychology phenomenon, but a biological one.

The scientific case for meditation as a means to reduce stress is well established. But glossolalia is not meditation. Andrew Newberg of the 2006 study, speaking to Dick Hanson and the DANA Foundation for an article on glossolalia, points out that as far as the biology of the brain is concerned, “In some sense, [glossolalia] is the opposite of the concentrative process of meditation.”

While it’s easy to dismiss the subject of speaking in tongues as nothing more than pseudo-scientific gibberish, the results of these studies suggest there’s more here than meets the ear. We live in a hectic, non-stop, information-overloading world, so any technique that one discovers to reduce stress and increase relaxation has to be worth taking the time to explore.

(But maybe try this one alone.)

A Happy Brain’s a Healthy Brain

Over at SharpBrains (which is a great resource for brain lovers) they’ve posted a handful of slide decks from their Virtual Summit, which was held September 19th and 20th. The topic of the summit was “How Can Neuroscience-based Innovation Enhance Behavioral & Brain Health.”

Listening to recordings form the summit requires a paid membership to the site, but the slide decks are free to view. Topics include “What are scal­able best prac­tices to spread smart health?” and “How can Big Data help upgrade brain care?” I’ve been looking at “The Future of Personal Brain Health.”

This is a slide deck that accompanied a talk, so it amounts to visual notes—I don’t have a transcript of what was said. But I found several points very intriguing. For example, Kaiser Permanente has an ad campaign that ties mental wellness to physical wellness.

Hugs = Healthy

Happy People are 50% healthier.

I’ve discussed happiness and memory before but what about overall health?

I decided to look up the science behind this, and apparently it’s related to cortisol and serotonin. Cortisol is a steroid your adrenal glands make in response to stress. Amongst other (necessary) things, cortisol suppresses immune function. And then there’s serotonin, which is “made” in the raphe nuclei of the brain, is used to regulate intestinal movement, and can effect mood. Although is not a causal relationship, cortisol is usually higher when serotonin is lower, and vice-versa.

So you if get stressed, your immune system is suppressed, you are not happy, and you get sick. If you’re not stressed, your healthy body produces serotonin, and you feel happy.

(Note that this is a one-way circle: this isn’t to say that if you make yourself happy, you will make yourself healthy.)

But back to the mind: most interesting to me is how cortisol and serotonin play a part in the formation of memory. Cortisol mixes with adrenaline to encode highly detailed short-term memories: a high-stress situation can etch a memory into a person mind. However, long-term stress can allow cortisol to impede memory function in the hippocampus. On the happier side of the coin, serotonin impacts learning and memory—until we get older, when serotonin starts to increase and alters associative memory.

So, in a nutshell, happiness is good for us, which seems obvious, but also helps us learn—but when we’re not happy, we can still learn short-term solutions to problems, to reduce stress, and get back to long-term behaviors to maintain happiness and health.