months ago. It helps us remember who we are and what we’re talking about.
Our hippocampus is a key ambassador because of its role in memory, its control of antistress hormones, and its ability to encode and retrieve information about our surroundings and directions. If you’ve ever been to London, you may be aware that the taxicab drivers there are famous for knowing where they are and where to go. They seem to have an internal virtual map enabling them to place things in spatial memory more accurately than the average person can. In fact, researchers who studied these cabbies’ brains discovered they had a hippocampus larger than that of people who don’t drive for a living. Not only that, but the cabbies’ hippocampi actually grew larger as they spent more time on the job (Maguire et al. 2000).
For our purposes, the hippocampus is significant because it is involved with placing relationship events in time, sequence, and context. Not only does it help us find physical locations (e.g., where to meet our partner for lunch), it also helps us encode and play back who did what, when and where, and with whom. The amygdalae are the prime culprits in disabling the hippocampus during times of war. For this reason, couples at war can be at risk for memory difficulties. Like Leia and Franklin, who argued over the events on Valentine’s Day, they can get embroiled in continual struggles to reconstruct and sequence stressful relationship events, and neither partner can accurately recall who said what and when. Any attempts to establish agreement only intensify the battle. In extreme cases, this constant war can literally cause our amygdalae to grow and our hippocampus to shrink!
If Leia and Franklin’s ambassadors had been functioning during their argument, one or both could have said, “Oh yeah, I remember I did say that,” or “You’re right, that was a difficult night we had.” Instead of each trying to prove the other wrong, they could have compared notes and pieced together the relevant history. Or, for that matter, one of them could have said, “You know, those details don’t really matter right now. I’m more interested in what you’re feeling.”
REMAINING EMPATHIC—THE INSULA
A special nod must be given to the insula . This ambassador gives us the ability to pick up our own body sensations, gut feelings, and heart beat. It is responsible for our ability to attach to another person, to have an orgasm, and to feel disgust. For our purposes, the insula is a vital contributor to feeling empathy. Thus, it is an especially important ambassador in the grand scheme of love.
Staying Connected—The Right Brain
Led by the social chairperson of our brain, our ambassadors are focused on keeping us connected with others, especially our partner and family members. The ambassador who takes the lead in this role is the right hemisphere of our brain, or more simply our right brain .
The right brain carries our imagination, artfulness, and overarching sense of things. It is speechless, yet elegantly communicative in other ways. A great deal of our humanity, our empathy, and our ability to connect comes from this ambassador. It is by far the expert on all things social, including reading facial expressions, vocal tones, and body language.
Had either Leia’s or Franklin’s right brains been fully engaged, they probably wouldn’t have ended up at war in the first place. One or the other might have suggested they pull the car over and talk face-to-face and eye-to-eye, or perhaps used a well-placed touch to signal friendliness and affection.
The skillful use of vocal tone, direct eye contact, and touch are all the workings of the right brain. This ambassador is superior at picking up social cues of distress and responding to them effectively, particularly through nonverbal actions or interactions that convey friendliness and warmth. These qualities are a couple’s greatest antidote to war.
Talking It Out—The Left
Our hippocampus is a key ambassador because of its role in memory, its control of antistress hormones, and its ability to encode and retrieve information about our surroundings and directions. If you’ve ever been to London, you may be aware that the taxicab drivers there are famous for knowing where they are and where to go. They seem to have an internal virtual map enabling them to place things in spatial memory more accurately than the average person can. In fact, researchers who studied these cabbies’ brains discovered they had a hippocampus larger than that of people who don’t drive for a living. Not only that, but the cabbies’ hippocampi actually grew larger as they spent more time on the job (Maguire et al. 2000).
For our purposes, the hippocampus is significant because it is involved with placing relationship events in time, sequence, and context. Not only does it help us find physical locations (e.g., where to meet our partner for lunch), it also helps us encode and play back who did what, when and where, and with whom. The amygdalae are the prime culprits in disabling the hippocampus during times of war. For this reason, couples at war can be at risk for memory difficulties. Like Leia and Franklin, who argued over the events on Valentine’s Day, they can get embroiled in continual struggles to reconstruct and sequence stressful relationship events, and neither partner can accurately recall who said what and when. Any attempts to establish agreement only intensify the battle. In extreme cases, this constant war can literally cause our amygdalae to grow and our hippocampus to shrink!
If Leia and Franklin’s ambassadors had been functioning during their argument, one or both could have said, “Oh yeah, I remember I did say that,” or “You’re right, that was a difficult night we had.” Instead of each trying to prove the other wrong, they could have compared notes and pieced together the relevant history. Or, for that matter, one of them could have said, “You know, those details don’t really matter right now. I’m more interested in what you’re feeling.”
REMAINING EMPATHIC—THE INSULA
A special nod must be given to the insula . This ambassador gives us the ability to pick up our own body sensations, gut feelings, and heart beat. It is responsible for our ability to attach to another person, to have an orgasm, and to feel disgust. For our purposes, the insula is a vital contributor to feeling empathy. Thus, it is an especially important ambassador in the grand scheme of love.
Staying Connected—The Right Brain
Led by the social chairperson of our brain, our ambassadors are focused on keeping us connected with others, especially our partner and family members. The ambassador who takes the lead in this role is the right hemisphere of our brain, or more simply our right brain .
The right brain carries our imagination, artfulness, and overarching sense of things. It is speechless, yet elegantly communicative in other ways. A great deal of our humanity, our empathy, and our ability to connect comes from this ambassador. It is by far the expert on all things social, including reading facial expressions, vocal tones, and body language.
Had either Leia’s or Franklin’s right brains been fully engaged, they probably wouldn’t have ended up at war in the first place. One or the other might have suggested they pull the car over and talk face-to-face and eye-to-eye, or perhaps used a well-placed touch to signal friendliness and affection.
The skillful use of vocal tone, direct eye contact, and touch are all the workings of the right brain. This ambassador is superior at picking up social cues of distress and responding to them effectively, particularly through nonverbal actions or interactions that convey friendliness and warmth. These qualities are a couple’s greatest antidote to war.
Talking It Out—The Left
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