This Is Your Brain on Sex (40 page)

In statistics a normal distribution of anything is represented by a bell curve. If scientists are talking about a “normal” type of love, a “normal” sex life, or a “normal” parenting style, it’s never one value. Those behaviors are distributed across the curve, with the more “normal” values appearing at the curve’s topmost point and the rest fanning out to the sides. “If we define normal as statistically normal, there’s a wide range of what fits into the normal category,” said Heiman. “There is also each end of a normal curve in which there are fewer cases—for example, people with very high or very low sexual desire. Are these at the less frequent extremes
of the normal curve? Yes. Are they therefore bad or problematic? No, not necessarily.”

We are all, each and every one of us, a little different. That is reflected in our epigenome, our neurochemicals, and our behavior. How could we not be individuals in all the ways we love as well? Those easy answers our hearts have been seeking from neuroscience—those rules, guidelines, and surefire methods to master love—simply may not be possible in the face of our own individuality.

The Great Mystery of Love

At a recent lecture series on sensory science and the arts at Johns Hopkins University, Semir Zeki, the first researcher to publish a neuroimaging study on love, commented, “The study of love is progressing quite well, at the molecular level and at the behavioral level.” The key word is
progressing.
When I spoke to him on the phone a few weeks later, I asked him whether we’d ever solve the mystery of love.

“If we were ever to demystify love, we would simply replace the mystery with awe. Francis Crick said something to that effect many years ago,” said Zeki. “Put yourself in the position of someone in the nineteen-twenties, interviewing a scientist and asking, ‘Do you think we will ever demystify the mystery of life?’ And then, in nineteen-fifty-three, Crick and Watson say, ‘Well, all the secrets of life are contained in two strands of DNA with their base pairs.’ That mystery was resolved in a way. And it was replaced by awe. I think, if we get there with love, it will be the same.”

There’s a line from Tom Robbins’s cult classic novel
Still Life with Woodpecker
that has stayed with me over the years: “When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It’s that simple.”
³
If Robbins is right, we’re safe: love isn’t going anywhere. There’s no danger, thus far, of unraveling its many mysteries, neuroscientifically or otherwise. I’d venture to say we also have plenty of time before we have to worry about dealing with any awe.

The neuroscientific study of love is moving forward, and it gains momentum each year. Yet even as new studies are published, they still lack the ability to answer our
great questions about love. Think about it: Has DNA answered all your questions about the nature of life? I’m guessing not. It still retains more than a hint of the enigmatic. I believe love will be the same: no matter how far neuroscientists get in their study of this particular phenomenon, more than some mystery will remain.

“No one wants to hear it, but we know very little about how the brain functions in response to reward system experiences like sexuality and love. Not to mention that these things are not always rewarding,” Heiman told me. “Readers need to be a bit more skeptical about the clever things said, the simple ideas about how the brain works and how it fits in with your everyday life. It’s just not that simple. We need to trust the fact that things are probably a little more complicated—and to our benefit that they are complicated so we have the kind of flexibility and adaptability we do—and trust that they aren’t complicated just because scientists want to make them that way.”

Though we may wish it were so, there are simply no easy answers when it comes to love. There is no clever playbook for navigating love’s messier situations; there are no promises to be revealed by five-step magazine stories or brain chemistry supplements. The brain is too complicated for that. That’s the bad news. But take heart: that same neurobiological complexity is also the good news. It allows us to pass on the right information to our children about the kind of world they are likely to encounter. It lets our various neuropeptides stand in for one another when needed. It permits us the freedom to make choices, to adapt and change course with relative ease. It gives us the ability to take stock of any situation involving another human being, to remember our past experiences, to learn from them, and to calculate future risks. And it allows us to love, love, and love again—even after our heart has been broken. Really, that complexity is a blessing.

At the beginning of this book I promised no advice or guidelines regarding love. I won’t go back on that commitment now. So if you still feel the need to pick up the next best-selling relationship book (there’s always one or two making the rounds) or listen attentively to another episode of that syndicated advice show, I pass no judgment. I understand the need to hold on to something in the midst of all this crazy complexity. Perhaps, after reading these pages, you can take the guidance offered from these experts with
an ounce of healthy skepticism, weed out the common sense from the hyperbole, and appreciate what studying the brain can really offer us when it comes to understanding love.

As for myself, I’ll take the mystery. I don’t mean to discount the neuroscience—not by any means. The research done to date has only whetted my appetite to learn more about the neurobiological basis of love. I fully intend to keep my eye on our friends the prairie voles, as well as the continuing neuroimaging work. Now that I find myself back in the big, bad dating world, I find the mystery to be a bit of a comfort. The lack of hard and fast answers means there is no “right” way to approach relationships, no one “right” partner for me. I have to admit that I find the notion quite liberating—a bit of love salvation, really. I am the singular product of my biology and my environment. Every potential mate can say the same. My brain’s complexity offers me infinite possibilities when it comes to love. To my mind, that’s much better than some precise how-to manual based on neurobiology, a one-size-fits-all list of musts and must-nots that has the potential to be as limiting as a straitjacket. There’s already enough pressure involved in the search for love, thank you very much. I don’t need the added burden of gene testing, neuropeptide measurements, or medications that may improve my love life at the expense of my cognitive function.

So, yes, I’ll take all the mystery my neurons tender. At the very least, that’s something I can count on.

Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to
the researchers who allowed me not only to visit and explore their laboratories but also to pick their brains about the future neurobiological study of love. Many thanks to Sue Carter, Larry Young, Kim Wallen, Julia Heiman, Barry Komisaruk, Nan Wise, and Thomas James for their time and insights. I was also fortunate enough to interview dozens of other wonderful scientists over the course of my research, including Karen Bales, Katie Barrett, Mario Beauregard, Ray Blanchard, Lucy Brown, Joshua Buckholtz, Frances Champagne, Lique Coolen, Jeff Cooper, Andrea Di Sebastiano, Catherine Dulac, Craig Ferris, Helen Fisher, Michael Frank, Justin Garcia, Jill Goldstein, Ilanit Gordon, Jordan Grafman, Cynthia Graham, David Haig, Carla Harenski, Randy Jirtle, Pilyoung Kim, Sean Mackey, Hiroaki Matsunami, Bruce McEwen, Cindy Meston, Paul Micevych, Fernando Munoz, Andrew Newberg, Alexander Ophir, Stephanie Ortigue, Chankyu Park, Stephen Porges, George Preti, Qazi Rahman, Heather Rupp, Ivanka Savic, Wolfram Schultz, Charles Snowdon, Shannon Stephens, Dick Swaab, Moshe Szyf, Ei Terasawa, Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, Hasse Walum, Beverly Whipple, Shawn Wilson, Steve Wiltgen, Charles Wysocki, Jason Yee, Semir Zeki, and Marlene Zuk. I couldn’t have asked for a more open and thoughtful group. Neuroscience truly is a field blessed with more than brilliance—everyone I spoke with on the course of this project was incredibly gracious and kind too.

Thank you to Demi Gandomkar, Denise Schipani, and Jen Miller for reading early drafts of my proposal, and to Carol Lee Streeter Kidd and her team for their transcriptional
brilliance. Thanks to Kim Wallen, Todd Ahern, and Sara M. Freeman for some incredible images. Words cannot express my gratitude to Alyson English, Thomas Strickland, Nicky Penttila, and Joel Derfner for their comments as I wrote the manuscript.

They say every writer needs a good editor. They’re right. I was lucky enough to have Sydney Tanigawa, Hilary Redmon, and Dominick Anfuso to help shape this into something worth reading. Every writer would also be lost without a good agent. Thanks to Joy Tutela of the David Black Agency and her assistant, Luke Thomas, for, well, everything.

I should also add that every writer needs good friends and family to cheer her on (and put drinks in her hand). I was more than well tended by Sarah Rose, Carl Morales, Dave Dillon, Jamie Pearson, Scott Collins, Aaron Bailey, Alison Buckholtz, Lily Burana, Rachel Weingarten, Kim Place-Gateau, Sylvia Hauser, Hillary Buckholtz, Shawn Gorrell, Clorinda Velez, Helen and Gayle King, the swinging Büdingen crew, Eleanor Jakes Willis, Tyler Schill, Reed Schill, and Max Schill. I love you all. I also appreciated all of the encouraging comments (as well as the answers to random personal questions about relationships) along the way from my friends, real and virtual, on both Twitter and Facebook—with a special shout-out to John Miller. Your kind and illuminating words helped more than you know.

Roan Low, I’d be lost without you. You’re the best male girlfriend a girl could ever have

Chet, you are an inspiration and one amazing kid. I promise to never again refer to you in print as “sexy.” But most of all, thank you to my mother, Laurel Willis Sukel. I would not have gotten past the first page without her love, encouragement, and most excellent babysitting skills.

About the Author

Kayt Sukel earned a BS in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and an MS in engineering psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a passionate traveler and science writer, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, the New Scientist, USA Today,The Washington Post, Islands, Parenting,, The Bark, American Baby, and the AARP Bulletin. She is a partner at the award-winning family travel website Travel Savvy Mom (
www.travelsavvymom.com
) and is also a frequent contributor to the Dana Foundation’s many science publications (
www.dana.org
). Much of her work can be found on her website, kaytsukel.typepad.com, including stories about out-of-body experiences, computer models of schizophrenia, and exotic travel with young children. She lives outside Houston and frequently overshares on Twitter as @kaytsukel.

Notes