Healthy Brain, Happy Life (6 page)

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC
!

Do you ever wonder what happens in your brain when you hear that piece of music you can listen to over and over and over again? The one that may even give you chills just listening? Robert Zatorre and his colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute showed that when people listened to music that gave them a strong emotional and physiological response (the Beach Boys for François, and Bach for me), the brain showed significant changes in the areas involved in reward, motivation, emotion, and arousal: the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex (the bottom part of the prefrontal cortex), ventral medial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and midbrain were all activated. So as François and I delved into playing and listening to music together, we were also activating the reward and motivation centers in our brains (see Chapter 8). No wonder I loved France so much!

So my French-enriched environment gave me a new language, a new persona, romance, adventure, and—of course, I have to add to the list—great food and wine. It was during this time and with François that I also really developed my love of French cuisine. My parents, and in fact my whole family, are great lovers of food and any big celebration—whether it be a graduation or a recital—has always been celebrated at a wonderful restaurant. But in France, my food experiences stepped up to a whole new, more sophisticated level. While I was a poor college student, you could still eat (and drink) like a king in Bordeaux, especially if you had a native son like François as a guide. Yes, I worked and studied like the science geek that I was, but I ate, drank, and spent leisure time playing the piano like a sexy flirtatious exotic French woman in love. Look at me! The world-class wallflower from Sunnyvale had a fantastic French boyfriend and a rich social, food, and cultural life. It was easy to do in such an enriching, stimulating environment.

FOOD, WINE, AND BUILDING NEW BRAIN CELLS

Living in France, it was not hard to eat a lot of delicious, flavorful French food and drink many delectable bottles of wine. Indeed, I tasted, sipped, and enjoyed wines of all kinds from all over France—from Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Provence, and Bordeaux. White, red, rose, and of course Champagne. All of these new tastes were literally turning on my brain. It turns out that experiments in rodents have shown that enriching your olfactory/gustatory environment does have a significant effect on the brain.

Studies show that once we grow into adulthood, there are only two brain areas where neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) can occur. The first brain area is the hippocampus, which is crucial for long-term memory and mood (more on these two features in upcoming chapters) and the second is the olfactory bulb, the brain area that is responsible for our sense of smell and therefore also contributes to our sense of taste. Studies show that if you enrich the olfactory environment of rats by giving them a nice big range of smells, you can enhance neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb and that the brain actually increases in size because of these new neurons. This suggests that my French adventure was not only teaching me a lot of about food and wine appreciation, but might actually have been enhancing the size of my olfactory bulb. While changes in size of the olfactory bulb in people with enhanced olfactory experiences have never been explicitly studied, it would be fascinating to examine this potential form of human brain plasticity. I feel a new brain plasticity experiment with sommeliers coming on!

In short, I loved France. I loved my life with François. But as the year passed by I knew that soon I would have to face the reality that I was due back at U.C. Berkeley to start my critical senior year and begin the next phase of my life. This was a difficult time for me because from a very early age I have always had a hard time letting go. I was the kid who worked herself into a tizzy and cried at the end of the summer because I didn’t want it to end and to go back to school. And I
loved
school. I just didn’t like endings. I think it was the fear that if something wonderful like summer vacation ended, I would never get it back. I don’t know where this fear came from—maybe I had a toy taken away from me as a child—I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that I had that terrible feeling of impending sadness in the spring of 1986 when my year in France was coming to an end.

In fact, I seriously thought about staying in France to finish my college career and do graduate work there. That would work, right? I was already working in a lab. A wise French scientist working in the Jaffard lab, to whom I will always be grateful, convinced me that I would be much better off going to an excellent graduate program in the United States. He was right, but that was not the answer I wanted to hear. My parents, who were none too happy about my involvement with a piano tuner/musician with no degree or higher education of any kind, wanted me back home and attending classes at U.C. Berkeley immediately.

But I didn’t want this magical year or my relationship with François to come to an end. How could I? Give up being the exotic English-speaking Asian girl with the hot French boyfriend for my old single life of science geekdom in the States? What could be worse?

I knew I was at a crucial point in my life. I knew that yes, I did have to return. There was no real possibility of staying in France after my year was up. I knew deep down that I not only
had
to finish my degree at Berkeley but I really
wanted
to finish my degree at Berkeley. But François could come with me, right? We could be together in the United States, and then we would decide what came next. Both of us held on to that dream for several months after I returned to school in California and started taking classes again. We were like a French and Japanese American version of Romeo and Juliet, with my parents playing the part of the disapproving family perfectly. Actually, my parents had enough disapproval between them to play the roles of both the Capulets and the Montagues. Every day, I wrote François long letters in French, telling him about everything that was so different in the States and all the things I missed about living in Bordeaux. We both wanted to keep our relationship alive, me with the hot French musician and he with the exotic Asian American girl who loved science.

That dream lasted for several months, until one day reality knocked on my door and walked right in. Specifically, the reality of applying and attending graduate school arrived. I suddenly realized that it was unlikely that François could make a living tuning pianos in the United States, especially since he didn’t speak English. And most difficult for me to admit, I knew deep down that while I so enjoyed going out with him for the year that we were together, he was probably not the lifelong partner for me. Besides, what did I know at the ripe old age of twenty-one? He was the first serious boyfriend I had ever had.

To this day, my last phone conversation with François is etched in my memory with great detail. I remember where I was sitting in my little studio apartment in Berkeley; I remember how I was sitting and holding the phone. Mostly I remember the pain, guilt, and discomfort I felt during that conversation, as if it happened yesterday. I did a terrible job breaking up with him and I knew it, but at that time I didn’t know any other way. I should have been more loving and understanding, and I should have explained the situation and my logic more clearly. Instead I felt pressured to get on with my life, and I was rude and abrupt with him. I know why I remember that call in so much detail. Emotion, either very negative, like the one that I was experiencing that day, or very positive, helps strengthen memories. One brain structure in particular, called the amygdala, which sits in the temporal lobe just in front of the hippocampus, is critical in the formation of strong memories from strong emotions. My amygdala was working overtime that day (you’ll learn much more about why we remember emotional events in the next chapter).

That day, I chose science over François. It was a hard decision, and it took me months to recover. But I know now that it was a choice that shaped the rest of my life.

THE STAR OF OUR EVOLUTIONARY BRAIN

The prefrontal cortex (PFC), situated just behind the forehead, was the last part of the brain to evolve, and scientists agree that it sets humans apart from most other animals. The PFC is essential for some of our highest-order cognitive abilities, including working memory (defined as the memory we use to keep things in mind, also referred to scratchpad memory), decision making and planning, and flexible thinking. In essence, this is command central for all of our executive functions, which play a role in so much of what we do and how we think. You will see how the PFC has a role in applying new concepts to other learning situations, managing our stress response, and supervising our reward system. Keep an eye out for the powerful PFC!