I have written so many times that Max changed my life.
What does that even mean? What did he change ? And How did he change?
When such questions come up; I think of Ellie Arroway's lines played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact:
Senator: You come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts. Only a story that, to put it mildly, strains credibility... Are you really going to sit there and tell us that we should just take this all on faith?
Ellie Arroway: Is it possible that it didn't happen? Yes... As a scientist I must concede that. I must volunteer that.
Michael Kitz: [raises voice] Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony and admit that this journey to the center of the galaxy, IN FACT, NEVER TOOK PLACE!!??
Arroway: Because I can't! I had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision of the universe that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how ... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not — that none of us — are alone! ... I wish I could share that. I wish, that everyone, if even for one moment, could feel that awe, and humility, and hope! But ... that continues to be my wish.
One of the gifts Max gave me is the gift of observation. I saw how observant he was while I picked the wrong friends, the wrong marriage which ended in a divorce and so many wrong things because I couldn't see what was right under my nose.
Max changed this. Our love for each other made me extremely observant. At this point in life; I can tell so much about a person without language just by observing their eyebrows move, their eyes, twitching of nose, lips and other subtle emotions without any sound.
But I couldn't even explain this gift properly.
Until now this new research slowly unveils little details on how Max changed me:
When love is in the air, what’s happening in the brain? For many years, biologists would answer, “Oxytocin!” This small protein — just nine amino acids long — has sometimes been called “the love hormone” because it has been implicated in pair-bonding, maternal care and other positive, love-like social behaviors.
But lately, neuroscientists have been revising their thinking about oxytocin. Experiments with mice and other lab animals suggest that instead of acting as a trigger for pro-social behavior, the molecule may simply sharpen the perception of social cues, so that mice can learn to target their social behavior more accurately. “It turns out it’s not as simple and straightforward as ‘oxytocin equals love,’” says Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University. If something similar is true of humans, that may, among other things, add a fresh wrinkle in attempts to treat social disorders such as autism by tinkering with the oxytocin system.
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“There’s a lot of noise in the brain,” says Larry Young, a behavioral neuroscientist at Emory University who, with coauthor Robert Froemke, explores our new understanding of oxytocin in the 2021 Annual Review of Neuroscience. “But when oxytocin is released, it turns down the static so the signal comes in much more clearly.”
That clarity is familiar to new parents, says Froemke, a neuroscientist at New York University Grossman School of Medicine and Young’s coauthor. “I’ve got two little kids,” he says. “Even two rooms away, air conditioner on, and I’m deep asleep, the baby starts crying and right away I’m awake and attending, full-pupil-dilated.”
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Neuroscientists also note that even though oxytocin clearly plays an important role in regulating social behaviors like pair-bonding and parental care, it’s not the only actor. “Falling in love is a full brain and body experience,” says Kozorovitskiy. “It has sensory elements and cognitive elements, and memory is important. Is oxytocin one of the many modulators that is mediating all those changes? Absolutely. But can we pin it all on oxytocin? That’s definitely an oversimplification.”
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