1. Preface
	a.	Three Questions
		i.	What is love, and why are some people unable to find it?
		ii.	What is loneliness, and why does it hurt?
		iii.	What are relationships, and how and why do they work the way they do?
	b.	People of every age have contemplated these questions, but until the recent advances in brain science, these questions have been left to the poets and philosophers.
	c.	Traditional theories of the mind hold that "Passion" is a problem to be overcome by "Reason" as one matures.
	d.	These authors hold that "where intellect and emotion clash, the heart often has the greater wisdom." (viii)
	e.	"This book — as it elucidates the shaping power of parental devotion, the biological reality of romance, the healing force of communal connection — argues for love. Turn the page, and the arrow is loosed. The heart it seeks is your own." (viii)

2.	The Heart's Castle: Science Joins the Search for Love
	a.	"The heart has its reasons whereof Reason knows nothing" -Blaise Pascal
	b.	The neural systems responsible for emotion and intellect are separate.
	c.	Love operates in "lawful" ways, even though we may not be able to discover the exact nature of the laws.
	d.	Psychiatrists and psychologists have constructed theories of emotion which have endured, despite the fact that they are based on virtually nothing that is biologically credible.
	e.	On Freud
		i.	"This account of humanity's heart binds love inextricably to sexual pleasure and perversion--indeed, it holds that love is but a convoluted representation of forbidden, repellent, incestuous urges." (7)
		ii.	"The [Oedipus] stories transfigured moral is that the civilizing forces of reason and intellect must reign if humanity's bestial nature is not to descend toward unspeakable horror." (7)
	f.	"As in politics, the factor determining the longevity and popularity of these [psychological theories] was not their veracity but the energy and wit devoted to promoting them." (8)
	g.	Although science has stripped Freud of credibility, two obstacles have kept new theories from taking hold:
		i.	Scientific theories (like behaviorism and cognitive approaches) are cold and alienating. There seems to be little humanity about them.
		ii.	There is still very little hard data.
	h.	In examining love scientifically, "one must balance a respect for proof with a fondness for the unproven and the unprovable." (12)
	i.	"People who do not intuit or respect the laws of acceleration and momentum break bones; those who do not grasp the principles of love waste their lives and break their hearts." (13) The results are tremendous societal suffering.

3.	Kits, Cats, Sacks, and Uncertainty: How the Brain's Basic Structure Poses Problems for Love
		In the early 20th century science shifted from an enterprise that believed it could truly come to know the universe, to accepting that there is a degree of mystery and uncertainty about reality which will never be overcome (Einstein, Godel, and Heisenberg are referenced). One's point of view and the questions one asks determine the answers. Until recently, no one cared to include the brain's biology when considering questions of love.

	a.	The Inside Story
		i.	The brain is a network of neurons which communication both electrically and chemically.
		ii.	The purpose of the communication is survival. Those whose neurons communicate well survive until the next mating season.
	b.	The Triune Brain
		i.	The development of the human brain was not "seamlessly executed" and so one should not expect the brain's configuration to be altogether logical (i.e., sleep has no known neural function, and it makes a mammal vulnerable to predators for several hours each day).
		ii.	The brain is thus composed of three distinct, yet intermingling, sub-brains, which represent three stages in evolutionary history.
		iii.	The theory of a triune brain helps explain some of "love's anarchy."
	c.	The Reptilian Brain
		i.	The RB is located at the top of the spinal cord. It functions to keep the body functioning, and houses the bodies most vital control centers.
		ii.	A person who is said to be "brain dead" has only a functioning RB.
		iii.	There is nothing in RB which contributes to our emotional life or to any other qualities which we consider "human."
	d.	The Limbic Brain
		i.	The LB is wrapped around the RB.
		ii.	It includes the hippocampus, fornix amygdala, septum, cingulate gyrus, perirhinal, and perihippocampal regions.
		iii.	The LB is the primary development which distinguishes mammals from reptiles.
			(1)	The LB allows mammals, unlike reptiles, to emotionally attach to their young.
			(2)	Mammals "take care of" their young while reptiles are basically indifferent to their young.
				(a)	Mammals form close knit social groups (reptiles do not).
				(b)	Mammals will risk life to protect a child or mate (reptiles do not).
				(c)	Mammals vocalize when separated (reptiles do not).
				(d)	Mammals play with one another (reptiles do not).
	e.	The Newest Brain (Neocortex)
		i.	The NB is the latest and largest section of the human brain.
		ii.	Speaking, planning, reasoning, motor control, and the senses all originate here.
		iii.	NB processing can go astray in odd ways. Reasoning and perception can become disjointed. (Sach's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat offers several clinical examples). Motor skills can deteriorate.
		iv.	The NB has a flexibility, though, that allows for healthy neurons to sometimes take over the functions of damaged neurons.
		v.	WILL
			(1)	When the body is about the move, electrical impulses appear in the brain in what is called the readiness wave.
			(2)	The conscious experience of a decision to move occurs after the readiness wave has passed. It seems that somehow the NB "knows" that movement is coming prior to a consciousness of the intention to move. (My note: Thus we are never "choosing" as consciously as we think we are.)
		vi.	ABSTRACTION
			(1)	Tasks that call for symbolic representation, strategy, planning or problem solving are dealt with in the NB.
			(2)	Species that are better problem solvers always have the largest NBs.
			(3)	Language is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the NB.
			(4)	Abstraction is a tremendous survival skill. It allows us to imagine possibilities and out-comes.
		vii.		"Many people conceive of evolution as an upward staircase, an unfolding sequence that produces ever more advanced organisms. From this perspective, the advantages of the neocortex...would naturally be judged the highest attributes of human nature. But the vertical conceptualization of evolution is fallacious.... Expunge this temperocentrist bias, and the neocortical brain is not the most advanced of the three, but simply the most recent." (30-31).
	f.	The Trouble with Triples
		i.	"Evolution's stuttering process has fashioned a brain that is fragmented and inharmonious, and to some degree composed of players with competing interests." (31)
		ii.	Differing lineage and function does not mean that the three brains are neurally autonomous. Their connections fade into one another in a way similar to the way day fades into night.
		iii.	The three areas of the brain possess different chemical processes, which is why a medication can effect one of the three sections without any impact on the other two.
		iv.	Remove a hamster's neocortex and she can still raise her pups. The slightest limbic damage destroys her maternal abilities. Damage the limbic area of a hamster, and it no longer "plays."
		v.	Most of the mind is not impressed by words and logic. It does not "take orders." (My Note: The Apostle Paul in Romans 7:15-16; He chalks the dilemma up to sin...)
		vi.	The LB does not respond to will as the NB does. It can be influenced, but not commanded.
		vii.		"The emotional brain, although inarticulate and unreasoning, can be expressive and intuitive." (34)

4.	Archimedes' Principle: How We Sense the Inner World of Other Hearts
		Archimedes was so excited by one of his mathematical discoveries that he ran naked from his bath shouting, "Eureka!" This kind of exuberance for life is driven by emotion, not intellect. Our culture dismisses the emotional motivations behind important concepts (like economics, or justice), and contributes to our misunderstanding of the deeper purpose of emotion. Emotion allows us to "receive the content" of another's mind. "For human beings, feeling deeply is synonymous with being alive." (37)
	a.	The Secret Society of Mammals
		i.	Charles Darwin was the first scientist to devote himself to the study of emotion in animals. In keeping with his theory, he explained emotions in terms of how they help the animal live.
		ii.	With the advent of Behaviorism, Darwin's perspective was relegated to a back shelf. It was not until the mid-60s that the theory of emotions as a "heritable advantage" came back into play.
	b.	Its Not Just an Expression
		i.	Facial expressions are identical all over the globe. Anger is expressed the same in every culture. The same is true for blind people, who have never seen anyone else's expression.
		ii.	Mammalian animals also give evidence of similar reactions, and therefore, emotions, though the debate about what it means to say that animals have emotions is still hotly debated.
		iii.	Direct survival emotions
			(1)	Fear is probably the limbic brain's oldest emotion, and has kept mammals alive for millenia.
			(2)	Disgust has kept animals away from disease.
		iv.	Interaction emotions
			(1)	Anger readies a mammal for combat and serves as a warning to others.
			(2)	Jealousy alerts a mammal to the potential loss of propagation opportunities.
			(3)	Contempt, pride, guilt, shame, and humiliation all serve to help a group manage social interactions and status.
			(4)	Religious fervor requires the kind of complex abstractional ability that is only found in a well developed neocortex, and is considered less likely to have a correlate in non-human animals.
		v.	Animals that are limbically mature, like dogs and cats, often possess a remarkable ability to read the emotional climate of a situation and respond to the emotional signals of their owners, despite the larger absence of a large neocortex (not so with a snake or a turtle....).
	c.	Music and Mayflies
		i.	Emotions can arise and dissipate in milliseconds.
		ii.	The process of experiencing an emotion is similar to experiencing a musical note.
			(1)	An event triggers an emotional neural pathway which initially elicits a facial expression.
			(2)	If the stimulus passes a certain threshold, a perceptible feeling arises.
			(3)	As neural activity diminishes, feeling intensity decreases.
			(4)	Some residual activity persists in the circuit after the feeling is no longer perceptible.
		iii.	A mood is analogous to the collection echos which follow the notes. Events of the day can leave us marginally stimulated in ways that create a "state of enhanced readiness to experience a certain emotion." (44) (i.e., If a man spills coffee on himself, the actual feeling is fairly short-lived, but if this is then followed by another negative event, the reaction will likely be faster and more intense than the situation calls for.)
		iv.	People who experience a feeling chronically are often keeping their neural pathways related to certain feelings stimulated through thinking about events that elicit those feelings.
			(1)	The feelings generated by imagination are often more intense than those generated by actual events.
			(2)	"The neocortical brain's tendency to wax hypothetical then becomes a deadly liability." (46)
		v.	No one yet knows what causes a brain to get stuck in chronic state, like depression.
	d.	An Emotional Epic: Scales and Wires
		i.	A certain degree of emotionality is hardwired into the reptilian brain.
		ii.	This is probably where basic personality temperaments derive.
			(1)	Worry, for example, seems to be controlled by an area of the RB, and is related to fear--an important survival emotion.
			(2)	The worry setting is usually somewhere in the middle of the scale.
				(a)	set too low = recklessness
				(b)	set too high = too inhibiting
			(3)	Our movie culture celebrates those with low worry settings as heros, but the reality is that such persons usually don't make it through the darwinian maze.
			(4)	Those with a low worry setting are prone to criminality.
		iii.	The nature of danger in our world has changed, but the inborn reactions have not, which creates problems.
		iv.	While the RB does not respond to the direct force of Will, it can be shaped by the more subtle forces of the limbic brain.
	e.	The Bridge Between Worlds
		i.	The LB's original purpose appears to have been to monitor both external world and internal bodily movement in order to coordinate them. It fine-tunes physiology to prime the body for reaction to the outer world.
		ii.	Once the LB settles on an emotional state, it sends outputs to the neocortical brain, which spawns conscious thoughts (What the hell is that guy doing?).
		iii.	The LB also sends signals to the RB to prepare the body for a fight.
	f.	Solitary Confinement
		i.	Although the LB oversees thousands of emotional transactions each day, sometimes it goes haywire.
		ii.	Asperger's syndrome: A condition whereby otherwise bright and intelligent persons are completely baffled by emotional and social convention. As one young woman said, "I know that the words happy and unhappy signify something to other people, and I have heard others use them, but I do not know what they mean.... As far as I know, I have had no experience of either."
	g.	Finishing Touches - In a Different Voice
		i.	The neocortical brain does not produce emotion, but it plays a role in modulating and integrating.
		ii.	The left temporal lobe of the NB produces and interprets speech, while the right temporal lobe of the NB adds the emotional flavor to speech.
			(1)	People with damage to the left lobe have trouble speaking and/or understanding words.
			(2)	People with damage to the right lobe have trouble interpreting and/or expressing the emotional nuances of speech.
			(3)	To the person with right lobe damage, the phrase, "That's a nice haircut," can sound no different from, "I want to make love to you."
			(4)	All of this adds to the now well publicized problems with interpreting e-mail and on-line chat, which offer conversation w/o the emotional cues. The quick rise of "Emoticons" confirms our inability to tolerate the ambiguity of emotionless communication.
	h.	A Resounding Success
		i.	Infants have an amazing capacity to recognize and interpret facial expressions, particularly mother's face.
			(1)	Visual Cliff Experiment (perceptual illusion using plexiglass): When babies perceive danger, they stop, but will continue if mother's facial expressions and voice urge them.
			(2)	Video Monitor Experiment: A child is not satisfied with a simple picture of mother's expressions. The child needs synchrony, that is, responses from mother that mirror his/her own expressions.
		ii.	Evolution has produced in mammals an incredible capacity for limbic resonance.
		iii.	When limbic resonance is missing, we find it disturbing (note: which may explain a portion of why emotionally damaged kids can be so disturbing to us).
		iv.	The power of psychotherapy draws, in part, from the goal of simple attending. There are few places left in our culture where one can expect to get an hour of undivided attention. Such attention energizes one's awareness of another world — "a world governed by forces that were old before humanity began." (65)

5.	A Fiercer Sea: How Relationships Permeate the Human Body, Mind, and Soul
	a.	Finding the Ties that Bind
		i.	Konrad Lorenz studied the hard-wired neural rule that tells geese to "follow that" (whatever moves) once they are born.
		ii.	Although the human rules for imprinting are more flexible than that of most animals, its not as flexible as people expect.
			(1)	Frederick II (13th century) set out to find the natural language of babies by having several raised by nursemaids who would care for them, but never speak to them. All the infants died before ever speaking.
			(2)	Rene Spitz (1940s) studied orphaned children who'd been fed and clothed, but not handled out of fear of infection from disease. Although physical needs were met, many became withdrawn and sickly. Many died from the diseases their isolation was designed to protect them from.
			(3)	John Bowbly (1950s) proposed attachment theory, which posited that infants are born with instinctive bonding behaviors that promote safety. He was severely castigated for his ideas by the psychoanalytic community which insisted that the child valued the mother because she gratified the id.
			(4)	American psychiatry at this time was shaped by psychoanalytic thought, but also by the Behaviorism of John Watson. Behaviorism insisted that a child should never be rewarded with attention for crying.
			(5)	Harry Harlow's (1950s) work with monkey's "dealt synchronous hammer blows to the Freudian and Pavlovian models of relatedness." Harlow found that baby monkey's consistently chose a warm, fuzzy "mom" without food over a wire-mesh "mom" without food.
		iii.	Ultimately Bowby's theories gained support.
			(1)	Infants can't move, so they engage in behaviors designed to keep mom close.
			(2)	Infants have different cries for different problems, and moms uncannily "guess" correctly.
			(3)	Infants work even harder to keep mom's attention when in strange settings.
			(4)	Attachment behavior becomes less conspicuous as the child ages, but the underlying attachment never goes away.
		iv.	Adults evidence some of the same issues when they "flock" together to see, for example, a scary movie or when they embrace when saying goodbye.
	b.	The Pliant years
		i.	Attachment theory has virtually proven that pivotal events in the first years of life determine personality.
		ii.	Mary Ainsworth (1978) divided the caretaking styles of mothers into 3 categories and was able to accurately predict the child's emotionality one year later based on the mothering style.
			(1)	Attentive, responsive, and tender = secure child
				(a)	upset and fussy when mom left
				(b)	reassured and joyful upon her return
				(c)	grade school = happy, social, resilient, persistent, likable, and empathetic
			(2)	Cold, resentful, and rigid = insecure-avoidant child
				(a)	indifferent when mom left
				(b)	ignored her when she returned
				(c)	grade school = distant, hostile, and unwilling to seek comfort/help when hurt
			(3)	Distracted and erratic = insecure-ambivalent child
				(a)	clutching when with mom
				(b)	distraught when seperated
				(c)	inconsolable after the reunion
				(d)	grade school = socially inept, timid, hypersensitive, and hungry for attention
			(4)	Ainsworth found no correlation between the amount of time a mother spent attending to her child and the child's emotionality.
				(a)	Secure attachment seemed to stem from the mother providing what the child needed when it was needed.
				(b)	"Wherever a mother sensed her baby's inarticulate desires and acted on them, not only was their mutual enjoyment greatest, but the outcome was, years later, a secure child." (75)
			(5)	Attachment leads to limbic resonance, which leads to "the neural core of what it means to be a human being." (76)

	THE ANATOMY OF LOVE
	c.	Mourning Becomes Electric
		i.	"Protest" - All mammals respond to short-term ruptures of the limbic bond with various signs of distress.
		ii.	For humans this is seen as intensely in an infant as it is in a jilted love infatuation.
		iii.	The physiology of protest is increased heart rate/body temperature and increased hormones which promote vigilance and alertness.
	d.	The Heart's Discontent
		i.	"Despair" - If the separation is prolonged, mammals collapse into lethargy and misery.
		ii.	The physiology of despair is decreased, irregular heart rate, irregular sleep patterns, diminishment of the growth hormone in the blood, and disturbances in the immune system.
		iii.	Grief and despair are "close cousins."
		iv.	Major depression may be some twisted form of the despair reaction. (My note: My experience is that depression is certainly driven by the despair reaction... "Nothing I do makes any difference, so why try"... "Life is meaningless...")
		v.	There are volumes of research on how prolonged grief/despair/depression lead to physical illness.
			(1)	These effects are multiplied in people who are alone, without support.
			(2)	Dozens of studies demonstrate that people with few or no affiliative ties to family/community are 3-5 times more likely to die prematurely.
			(3)	Yet Western medicine continues to disregard the evidence. Affiliation and attachment continue to be ignored in treatment plans.
	e.	The Hidden Persuaders
			i.	The physical presence of a mother mammal affects the physiology of the babies in very complex, but predictable ways (Hofer's experiments with rats).
		ii.	When separated from their attachment figures, mammals "spiral into somatic dissaray."
	f.	The Open Circle
		i.	Most people assume the human body is more self-contained than it actually is. (More of an "open loop" than a "closed loop.")
		ii.	Scientists are finding that attachment is necessary for mammals to maintain neuropsychologic stablity.
		iii.	This mutually synchornizing exchange is called "limbic regulation."
			iv.	Limbic regulation is the process whereby other persons effect the physiological processes of an individual.
			(1)	A baby's system is maximally open-looped. Without others, he will die.
			(2)	As a baby matures it takes over some of its own regulatory activity.
			(3)	But it is impossible for anyone to develop complete control.
			(4)	If babies are removed from the sources of limbic regulation too soon, then they develop a lifelong vulnerability to despair.
		v.	Limbic regulation requires that communal living be a central feature of human life.
	g.	The Outsiders
		i.	Attachment ultimately determines the nature of a child's mind.
		ii.	Monkeys raised in social isolation display a variety of poor and mis-timed social behaviors.
		iii.	When researchers create a distracting environment for monkey moms, they raise kids that show magnified despair and anxiety reactions.
			(1)	The young monkeys seem fairly normal when by mom's side, but become timid, clingy and subordinate when separated.
			(2)	This "neurotic" behavior continues into adulthood.
			(3)	These monkeys also show life-long disturbances in neurotransmitters.

	BUILDING BLOCKS OF LOVE: The biology of love is incredibly complex.
	h.	The Notorious Transmitter (Serotonin)
		i.	The first antidepressants were discovered by accident, and could be lethal in even small overdoses.
		ii.	Prozac, introduced in 1988, was the first antidep that was almost impossible to overdose on.
		iii.	Serotonin agents began to show a remarkably wide array of positive benefits - for some this includes lessening the pain of loss and heartache. Some persons who are unable to leave destructive relationships because of the associated grief are able to leave after taking medication.
	i.	The Religion of the Masses (Opiates)
		i.	Opium not only alleviates physical pain, it alleviates the emotional pain of detachment.
		ii.	The limbic brain has more opiate receptors than any other part.
		iii.	Limbic pain is extremely high because, for mammals, the detachment can be devastating. (My Note: Our life experiences have moved ahead of our brain's ability to make sense at such lightening speed; we are now often confused. We have tons of attachments that are not necessary for life, but we feel as if we re dying when they are broken.)
		iv.	Chronic self-mutilators, whose injuries stimulate the brain's opiate centers, often have in common a life-long sensitivity to pain.
		v.	Warm human contact also stimulates internal opiate release.
	j.	A Prairie Dog's Life (Oxytocin)
		i.	Flat-land prairie dogs are very family oriented and monogamous while mountain prairie dogs are very solitary and promiscuous. The mountain prairie dogs are often lousy parents.
			(1)	About the only difference in the two brains of these species is the number of oxytocin receptors.
			(2)	Both have lots of oxytocin at birth, when initial attachment is crucial, but the level in the mountain prairie dogs diminishes after birth while it remains much higher for the flat-land version.
		ii.	In mammals, oxytocin gushes at childbirth and at puberty.
	k.	The Breadth of the Bond
		i.	Mammals can attach across species because of this shared limbic structure.
		ii.	This is why pets can help persons feel better and live longer.

6.	Gravity's Incarnation: How Memory Stores and Shapes Love
		Memory occurs because some neural pathways endure. Many (most?) memories are emotional, with no conscious trace. The search for a romantic partner seems driven by these unconscious memories. Freud proposed the first enduring theory of memory which science has generally proven untenable.

	a.	The Impossible Diary
		i.	Explicit (or conscious) Memory is primarily a function of the hippocampus.
		ii.	With the hippocampus is injured, amnesia occurs and the person is locked into an eternal present.
	b.	Covert operations.
		i.	Memory also occurs in an unconscious, or implicit, fashion.
		ii.	Research has found that we can "memorize" information that is too complex for us to understand logically, and then us it productively (experiment with the students and the complex weather cues and the experiment with students recognizing words from a new, very complex "grammar.").
		iii.	People seem to have an ability to "develop a feel" for situations and learn to make good decisions even when they are not conscious of all the input.
		iv.	The implicit memory system drives our choices in love more than the explicit.
	c.	A Child's Garden of Memories
		i.	Implicit (limbic) memory is fully functional at birth while explicit (neocoritical) memory must develop. Also, explicit memory deteriorates with age. Implicit memory does not.
		ii.	Babies remember and recognize mother's voice and face within 36 hours of birth. Babies DO NOT learn father's voice as quickly, suggesting that learning is happening in utero.
		iii.	In adulthood emotional memories can be stored even with the rational system has been damaged. The authors recount an experiment with a man who could not generate new memories, but who was able to choose the friendliest nursing aide.
		iv.	These emotional memories form the impressions of what we define as love, and shape our lifelong search for it.
		v.	"Turning psychotherapy into a treasure hunt for the explicit past is misguided." (118) The memory system is far to complex to be reduced to a few key experiences that can explain attachment.
		vi.	Intelligence is not all that effective in changing the behavior that emanates from limbic memories.
	d.	Reality Flights
		i.	Implicit memory, like many mental mechanisms, warps our window on the world. If this warping is severe and prolonged, we call in Psychosis.
		ii.	"Reality is thus more personal than daily life suggests." (120)

7.	A Bend in the Road: How Love Changes Who We Are and Who We Can Become
		Standard computer software can only respond to the situations for which and in ways which it has been developed. "Neural network" software, however, has the ability to "learn" from additional data which can increase accuracy with experience (the example of cardiac diagnosing software, accurate 97% of the time, is given). This software's ability to analyze data and come to conclusions which are not obvious rationally allows it to mimic human intuition. Such intuitions are at the heart of love.
	a.	Memories are made of....What?
		i.	A memory is the firing of neurons in a particular order.
		ii.	Once a stimulus fires the neurons, a remnant remains long after the neurons have calmed.
		iii.	A current stimulus will fire particular neurons, which will then fire the neurons around them to which they have a link. At any given moment neurons are firing because of the current stimulus and because of these links. This creates memory.
		iv.	Many of these patterns reside in the limbic brain.
	b.	The Echo's Ring
		i.	When a stimulus activates neural pathways, related pathways begin to "warm -up." For instance, when presented with the stimulus "dog," the pathways for "German Shepherd" and "golden retriever" warm up.
		ii.	In the limbic brain, emotional pathways warm up. Past emotions which are related to the stimulus began to create "sympathetic reverbation."
		iii.	Since related pathways are stimulated together, depressed people tend to dwell on depressing thoughts and emotions while happy people tend to dwell on happy thoughts and emotions.
			(1)	If an emotion is powerful enough, it can shut down competing pathways completely.
			(2)	Severely depressed people cannot conjure any sensation or memory of happiness.
		iv.	Children whose early lives are filled with abuse become programmed to react neurally to all expressions of anger (Abused persons show amplified brain waves when simply seeing a picture of an angry person).
		v.	Medications provide a damper to this over-sensitive, limbic reverb, bringing it down to a manageable level (though no one yet really knows why they work...).
	c.	The Road Curves
		i.	The brain lays down similar memory sets in response to similar stimuli
		ii.	The links degrade a little bit over time, and sometimes older links are dissolved by new information.
			(1)	This means that memories are more like sand dunes than rocks
			(2)	This also explains the fallibility of eyewitnesses.
			(3)	An experiment by Ulric Neisser involved interviewing students right after the Challenger disaster and then again 2 ½ years later. Some the of memories were "wildly inaccurate," as though the original memories were simply gone.
		iii.	The neural past can also interfere with the present, shaping the way memories are stored.
		iv.	The core of similar neuro-patterns is referred to as an "Attractor."
			(1)	The brain is attracted towards interpreting input according to this core information
			(2)	The example of the letter "H" is used. We tend to "read" anything remotely shaped like an "H" as an "H."
			(3)	This is what allows us to read handwriting fairly easily, even though everyone writes differently.
			(4)	This also makes proofreading difficult because the brain will see "taht" as "that." (I recall the advice of reading the sentences backwards in order to proofread).
			(5)	The brain has a habit of shaping information into attractors.
		v.	The limbic brain has emotional Attractors.
		vi.	"If the early experience of a limbic network exemplifies healthy emotional interaction, its Attractors will serve as reliable guides to the world of workable relationships. If diseased love presents itself to a child, his Attractors will encode it and force his adult relationships into the [same pattern]." (140)
			(1)	This is at the core of Freud's concept of transference.
			(2)	This also creates problems for "old" researchers trying to learn new concepts.
	d.	When Worlds Collide
		i.	It is not possible to think one's way around one's Attractors.
		ii.	Limbic Attractors not only distort one's own perception, but they exert a force on the limbic networks of others.
		iii.	The more often you think or imagine a thing, the more likely your Attractors will spring into action in a similar situation.
		iv.	We participate in "limbic revision" in our relationships as we allow the connections to modify one another.
		v.	"Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love." (144)

8.	The Book of Life: How Love Forms, Guides, and Alters a Child's Emotional Mind.
	a.	The Big Picture
		i.	Everything a person is springs from two things
			(1)	-DNA
			(2)	-Daily Life
		ii.	DNA supplies a basic structure that is firm, but not inflexible
		iii.	Billions of neurons die through childhood and adolescence as the brain develops a "leaner" template. The dead neurons represent reams of information that never gets permanently encoded.
		iv.	The neurons that survive are the ones that develop solid connections.
			(1)	For instance, children are born with the capacity to make sense of all languages.
			(2)	Some of these capacities die out with lack of use, hence, the Japanese cannot hear the difference between an "r" and an "l" and the French substitute a "z" for a "th."
		v.	As the neural connections coalesce the personality becomes firmer.
	b.	In the Beginning
		i.	DNA sets the range for development temperament and emotional experience.
			(1)	Some people are born more shy.
			(2)	Some strains of mice are 30 times more anxious than others.
			(3)	Some families simply carry a blueprint that allows for more joy.
		ii.	However, much neural maturation occurs after the infant leaves the womb, at which point neurological development becomes subject to the presence, or absence, of parental love.
	c.	Casting the Mold: Experience plays a central role in turning genes on and off (My Note: Jungian theory posits that the archetypes are brought to life through external experiences). Good-mothering can overcome problems with temperament and/or a tendency toward anxiety.
	d.	Learning to See
		i.	Just like our minds are wired to see the three dimensions of a drawn cube, our minds are wired to intuit the limbic climate of a person or situtation.
		ii.	A child is born with the hardware for limbic sensing, but a guide (attuned parent) is necessary if the hardware is going to be used well.
		iii.	"One of a parent's most important jobs is to remain in tune with her child, because she will focus the eyes he turns toward inner and outer worlds. He faithfully receives whatever deficiencies her own vision contains. A parent who is a poor resonator cannot import clarity. Her inexactness smears his developing precision in reading the emotional world. If she does not or cannot teach him, in adulthood he will be unable to sense the inner states of others or himself." (156)
	e.	Learning to Be
		i.	The heart rhythms of securely attached babies are steadier than those with insecure relationships.
		ii.	The inner balance and structure comes from the attachment to the parents, and orients a person to life.
	f.	Learning to Love.
		i.	In first years of life a child slowly develops an impression of what love feels like.
		ii.	This initial impressions of love are attached to whomever is present, usually the parents.
		iii.	The child makes no moral judgements – if she is present, the child will adore the face of his mother regardless of her character. (And he cannot value another in the same way any more than a golden retriever can value someone besides his owner)
		iv.	The closer a mate matches this prototype, the more the connection leaves him feeling like he belongs.
		v.	People can readily accept the wonder of the musician who has "perfect pitch," yet balk at the notion that a person can pick a certain type of personality out of a crowd.
		vi.	If one tries to be with someone who strays from the limbic template, then a sense of isolation ensues. Experience demonstrates over and over that people prefer a painful relationship with someone who meets the limbic pattern over a "nice" relationship with someone their attachment mechanisms can't decipher.
	g.	Ever After...
		i.	After the formative years learning doesn't stop, but it slows.
		ii.	Biology works against adult learning. The ability of neurons to sprout new connections declines after adolescence.
			(1)	We tend to force new information into old templates rather than see the fresh possibilities.
			(2)	Thus an adult will usually continue the patterns of love learned in childhood.
		iii.	Still, change is very possible.

9.	Between Stone and Sky: What Can Be Done to Heal Hearts Gone Astray
	a.	Paradigms Lost
		i.	When it comes to the treatment of mental problems, the biological perspective and psychological perspective have always been in tension. Each have some evidence to support their effectiveness.
		ii.	Both medication and psychotherapy have been shown to alter a living brain.
		iii.	Psychotherapy effects these changes by altering limbic processes.
	b.	Changing the Emotional Mind
		i.	Limbic Resonance: "The first part of emotional healing is being limbically known – having someone with a keen ear catch your melodic essence." (170)
		ii.	Limbic Regulation
			(1)	Balance through Relatedness
				(a)	Human physiology finds stabilization in limbic relatedness.
				(b)	Some therapists mistakenly attempt to substitute insight for relatedness.
				(c)	People who need regulation often leave a therapy session feeling better, though they may not be able to say why.
			(2)	Balance through Medication
				(a)	Some mental states are beyond the power of relatedness alone. Depression, for instance, shuts down limbic circuits, rendering relationships meaningless.
				(b)	There must be at least as much trust in the medication as there is in the therapist for either to be effective.
				(c)	The high percentage of placebo effect suggests, say the authors, that there is a strong limbic element in the effectiveness of medications.
				(d)	Medication will never be as effective has limbic relatedness.
		iii.	Limbic Revision
			(1)	Three Goals of Therapy
				(a)	The first goal of therapy is "knowing someone."
				(b)	The second goal of therapy is "modulating emotionality."
				(c)	The third, and most ambitious, goal of therapy is "revising the neural code that directs emotional life."
			(2)	Revising Relationship Patterns
				(a)	A person cannot will to desire a certain kind of relationship.
				(b)	Describing a good relationship to a person does not inscribe it on the limbic brain.
				(c)	A therapist opens his limbic brain up to the Attractors of the client, wherever this may lead.
					The therapists goal is to neither deny the emotional responses that are evoked, nor to let them run their course. He waits for key moments when the relationship can be nudged in a different direction. Over time, the Attractors shift and change occurs.


				(d)	Therapy shifts whom a person has the power to choose in love.
				(e)	People with unhealthy Attractors tend to attract each other, thus compounding the misery. Occasionally, however, people make healing choices and "life finds a way."
	c.	When Psychotherapy Goes Astray
		i.	Solid Ice: One reason therapy fails is that the therapist fails to connect to the limbic reality of the other.
			(1)	The therapist gets caught up in how the person should feel, and so misses how he does feel. (Inference is substituted for resonance.)
			(2)	Therapy education often "trains" the art of therapy out of the therapist and substitutes a cookie-cutter theory.
		ii.	Swept Into the Current: A second reason therapy fails is that the therapist gets completely caught up in the limbic flow of the other.
			(1)	Therapy requires that the therapist be open the persons Attractors.
			(2)	If the therapist is not strong enough to resist and reshape them, then a dance of traumatic repetition begins where the therapist and client play out the broken principles in the client's mind.
			(3)	Good therapy cannot avoid some elements of traumatic repetition, but the therapist must not give in to it. (My Note: Kohut insists that non-traumatic failures in empathy stimulate personal growth.)
			(4)	The only guarantee against giving in to the Attractors is to create and emotional distance that dooms the process from the beginning.
	d.	Where Worlds Meet
		i.	Patients do not become "generically" healthier. They become more like the therapist.
		ii.	It is the relationship to the therapist that brings about change, not the system of therapy.
		iii.	For this reason, it is imperative that the therapist has his/her emotional house in order.
	e.	Myths and Mountains
		i.	Revising limbic Attractors can take years, even though the neocortex can process new information rapidly.
		ii.	The attempts to provide "mini-treatments" do not create limbic change.

10.	A Walk in the Shadows: How Culture Blinds Us to the Ways of Love
		The limbic structure that allows us unique connection also opens us up to unique pain. Emotional connection is so central to our humanity that the way we conduct relationships in our society is of utmost importance. Some cultures encourage emotional health. Some do not. Some cultures, American included, actively promote activities which are antithetical to fulfillment.

	a.	Kids These Days
		i.	An infant has an amazing arsenal of tools designed to keep parents close, yet American culture dictates that the infant almost immediately be removed from parents at night.
			(1)	SIDS deaths are much, much lower in cultures which practice co-sleeping.
			(2)	One theory is that in co-sleeping the mother's physical presence helps regulate the infants neurological functioning. (Babies always sleep turned toward mother.)
			(3)	Our American preoccupation with independence is likely fostering a climate that is damaging to the limbic brain. (My Note: I recently came across a study that suggested boys who are coddled as children are more successful as adults.)
		ii.	Furthermore, children in America once spent most of their days with their mothers. This is often not the case any longer.
			(1)	Many young children, who need the one on one attention of a limbically connected parent find themselves competing for attention with several other kids.
			(2)	It is not possible for another person to forge the limbic bond that a mother and father are capable of forging.
		iii.	Other evidence related to the importance of mom's positive presence is building.
			(1)	Neglect produces babies whose head circumference is smaller.
			(2)	Children whose mother's are depressed early in life show distinct cognitive deficits.
			(3)	Responsive parenting confers apparently permanent personality strengths.
	b.	The Dynamics of Duos

11.	The Open Door: What the Future Holds for the Mysteries of Love