So I now have about 6 weeks to go before my due date. It's a weird time because I know I should try to enjoy myself, since when the baby's here it will be a lot harder to do just about everything. But the sad fact of it is that there's nothing I want to do. Honestly, I'm almost to the point where I can sit and stare into space and that's as fulfilling as it gets. Even the usual stuff I like such as reading or biking just doesn't do it for me right now. And forget trying to do anything useful like write books, paper revisions, or talks. I can barely string a coherent sentence together any more. Even writing emails at work seems to take twice as long for me since I have to check over each message several times to make sure I'm coherent.

Sigh. So I guess the best way to term this feeling is ennui. I'm not depressed exactly, just really out of it and feeling guilty over my lack of initiative. All I want to do is lie in a heap on the couch. Anything that requires leaving the house, like going to see a friend or shopping seems so effortful and not worth it. Making dinner or doing housework is equally painful. I don't even have the concentration to watch TV!

I could chalk this all up to anemia, since my midwife says my hemaglobin is a bit below borderline. But it's not just tiredness or body fatigue, it's blankness. My brain is just super blank, like I've used up all my dopamine supplies that normally motivate me to do things, or even want things. I'm not even too sure of what to think about, which seems even weirder a problem. Like, after doing email or checking the nytimes.com, I don't even know what I'd want to look up next on the internet. Nothing seems interesting to me. Anyways, hopefully this will pass since I'm now taking iron supplements. I'm now wondering how quickly they'll kick in and whether I'll suddenly want to go backpacking around Europe like I did when I was 7 months pregnant with Henry. 

I was watching this documentary last night about this 21 year old girl addicted to heroin, who basically had this nothing life of getting up, going to score and then coming to her bedsit to vegetate until the drug wore off, and then getting up and doing it all over again. She didn't want to read or talk to people or do anything besides taking drugs. It was a very scary program to watch since the girl had this mother who basically was begging her to go to rehab and telling her daughter that she'd do anything for her and the daughter didn't even care--she just manipulated her mom again and again to loan her money for more drugs or get free rides around town doing errands. It was awful seeing what a shell of person you become, and the girl admitted as much, saying with each drug she tried she could tell her morals about anything were less and less and now she had none at all besides fulfilling her need for heroin as often as possible. 

Hmm, why  am I mentioning this? Well, I guess I'm just fascinated how far one can go with complete ennui over all aspects of one's life expect for what you can put into it. This girl dropped out of school at 15 and has no other interests in anything and never did have any interests. Even the mom admitted the daughter seemed bored with most activities at a young age. Bizarre, I thought. What kind of kid is bored with everything? What was wrong with her brain?  And then I remembered how one of my colleagues was describing the iron-deficient South African kids she saw this spring, how they just lay in heaps all day and didn't even have enough energy to play. Then again, how could assume the heroin-addicted girl's lack of motivation was anemia when it could have been a gazillion other things, like low D2 dopamine receptor expression in her caudate, or the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) enzyme, which degrades dopamine. 

Still, it made me wonder. I went and checked on pubmed and found an association of low hemoglobin levels in the reward centers of the brain to addictive behavior. But it was just one paper. And then I started reading all these other abstracts on the genetics of addiction, and how people with genes regulating impulsivity are the ones with the high risk for using drugs. And yet, if I had to think of the peope I've known who have gotten addicted to drugs, most of them seemed to start sheerly out of boredom--there just wasn't anything else as compelling in their lives as doing drugs, so there was no real trade-off of goals or interests. 

I guess this journal entry can be summed up in three words: ennui is powerful. And I can't wait until it goes away.....
Oh, wait, I'd actually have to DO SOMETHING  to make it go away....how ironic!!!

 One of the things I miss about doing research in animals is the complete control you had about the way the experiment goes. With humans, it's a whole different story, and I felt it even more acutely last week when we finally started up a clinical study. Since all the studies I do involve giving people an experimental ingredient to see how their brain function changes, there are a lot of ethical hoops you must jump through and even the ones that seem trivial (like when a subject doesn't show up for a test session or a subject's test computers stops working) becomes a huge ethical hassle in how to include their data, whether their experience has been skewed enough from the norm that you can't reschedule them, the list goes on and on. With each little thing that goes wrong I have to go consult with various members of our clinical study team like the statistician, the test product coordinator, the recruitment coordinator, to make sure everyone's okay about these little tiny changes. If anyone's unhappy about the change, they can actually stop the study from continuing---all those months of work down the drain!!

At the same time this past week I was supposed to go to the UK to report on how clinical studies were going. So, even though small disasters were happening in the Netherlands constantly, I had to put on a sunny picture of how everything was going well (fingers crossed behind my back). But even while I acted all calm and in control, I got a lot of questions about how things would proceed while I was gone on maternity leave, which is in about 6 weeks. The truth is, I have no idea how things will go, it's funny when you get so involved in your studies you kind of think no one else can do them. And I got more and more frustrated by the idea of taking so much time away from work, a little over 5 months, even though I know I should feel like I deserve this. After all, women in the UK and Scandinavia get 12 months off, and are guaranteed their jobs and responsibilities will be the same when they get back. But still, when I had Henry I didn't take any time off, since you really can't during the first year of grad school when there are so many courses you have to pass. The feeling I get now, when I think about all those months away from work, is how worried I'll be about all the things I can't control. 

It's funny, actually, since I keep on seeing science articles lately about how low-status adults, meaning those who have little control over their jobs, have very high brain-damaging stress hormones even compared to high-status adults with very demanding jobs. The message is, even if your job is quite stressful, if you have some control over what happens then your health will be okay in the long run. This is in keeping with what has been shown in animals, where if rats or monkeys can control when they will experience an electric shock, they won't be increasing their risk for depression like those animals who are shocked at random. 

Then there's the interesting idea of what happens to people who feel like they have control over their lives, even when they don't. And once again, I have to bring up Ted as a perfect example of this. Since he just started working for this company, he's got very little control over how things are done there, since seniority--i.e. years at the company--dictate how much power you have. Yet he seems to find the job very satisfying since he's glommed onto this small project where he feels like he's got control, and thus doesn't care about the rest of it. Meanwhile, at my work I am freaking out about projects that aren't even my own and how I can't influence them. This strategy of giving yourself false control (like Ted) to reduce stress has also been shown to help in animal studies. Rats who can't control getting shocked actually reduce their stress quite a lot by biting another rat nearby (what I think of as a maladaptive stress reduction) or doing lots of exercise (isn't it interesting to note that Ted is an exercise nut? hmmmm!!!)

So, it's been shown that exercise does help with stress but I think that's not nearly as effective for humans as for rats, since we can ruminate about our problems even while exercising while rats can't as much. What I really need to do is pretend I have control--but how, HOW??? It's awfully hard to get myself to believe in anything, I'm such a naturally skeptical person. I think that's why I like reading novels so much, because it's a good way to escape what I think is wrong in my life by taking someone's else problems, where I know everything will get resolved in the end...

I'd be happy to hear ideas....

One of the best books I read this past year was Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and the sequel is about to be released. But Lenore has an ARC she's giving to a lucky winner who comments here.

 I was reading this interesting article the other day about how people newly fallen in love--that mad, passionate, heart-thumping kind of love-- have low levels of serotonin in their brains. This finding parallels what's been shown several times in the brains of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients, which are also deficient in serotonin.

So let's take a look at the similarities between passionate love and OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is basically where people feel compelled to do certain rituals, like washing hands constantly, or checking the locks on doors, in order to assuage their unshakable fearful thoughts. So the OCD type is basically unable to control their impulses (even when they reason to themselves they don't need to check a lock five times in row, they keep picturing the house getting robbed and this drives them to go back and check once again.

People in love, on the other hand, are having their own obsessive thoughts on just one subject: the objects of their love, and are constantly contacting them, plotting of ways to spend time with them and impulsively throwing everything else aside to be with them. Maybe such people aren't consumed with fearful thoughts, but if the love is unrequited, meaning they can't assuage their obsession by constant contact, then the love becomes a source of endless anxiety and unreasonable acts, just like the way OCD turns checking a locked door into this inescapable, stressful compulsion.

So what happens if you take normal people and reduce their serotonin levels (you can do pretty easily this by feeding them a low-tryptophan meal)? They also become prone to impulsivity and anxiety. No, they don't get full-blown OCD but that's because their brains are more or less functioning normally. With OCD-types there's also evidence that their dopamine signaling is askew, which means they have malfunctioning motivational control and difficulty in choosing appropriate rewards. Basically they driven to want to do something over and over again, which is what you'd normally do for something super-rewarding (like eating potato chips from a bag), even though it's not giving them pleasure.
Meanwhile, people in love are able to get a lot of pleasure from doing their rewarding behavior (seeing their love objects), since their brains are signaling even more dopamine than usual. It's only when they don't get to see their love interests that they're not getting the rewarding dopamine rush, which balances out the anxiety caused by their low serotonin state. But poor OCD patients don't even get to quell their fears by doing their ritual, it only makes them feel even more out of control, since they know they're acting abnormally. It's interesting to note that the current treatments for OCD work on the monoamine neurotransmitter signaling (which includes serotonin and dopamine).

So, what would happen if you boosted the serotonin of people in love? Would they stop being obsessed with their love interests and doing stupid, impulsive behaviors? Could that be a way to mend a broken heart? Well, probably it wouldn't work completely, since obviously there's a lot more to the brain and being in love than just serotonin levels, but it could help.

I wonder if I can find any research on this?

 Hmm, I meant to update sooner after my trip to London, when it was fresh in my mind. But now it's just a vague memory of various train stations and airport waiting areas. That's the sad thing about traveling for only 2 days: the business of getting there takes up almost as much time as being there.
I was in the UK to do 2 things. One was to give a presentation to some business managers on functional foods for the brain, and the second was to see how a study I set up in London was going. The first bit was easy, but stressful, since you have to dumb down science enough for business people to understand the concepts, but not so dumb that it seems too boring. This is harder than it looks. It's fine to tell an audience that you should eat certain foods to protect the brain against aging, but how do you make them care? To make them feel like it's really happening to them right now when they feel fine? I could show them a mechanism of age-mediated damage like inflammation via activated microglia and cytokines, and show how X ameliorates this. But already I've lost them since I got too technical. It's better if I just keep it on a level they can understand, like 'your cognitive ability will be protected', yet usually there's no proof of an experimental compound protecting human cognition, just some preliminary animal data. And then you have the problem of explaining why animal data is exciting enough to invest in doing a human study (which costs ten times more).

So anyways, I did my presentation and then I had all this free time for the rest of the day. I suppose I could've just holed up in some empty meeting room and worked on my computer, but I can never do that while traveling. I always have such an irresistible urge to explore a new place, and see what people are up to. So I wandered around the research facility, which used to be an old English estate (complete with manor house and gardens) and got to watch food scientists make experimental new drink recipes, or crashed other meetings where business managers were discussing how to make their products greener and more environmental. I got to find out that a lot more more carbon dioxide gets created in producing and shipping food, rather than from stuff that gets all the media attention, like airplane travel. If people stopped wasting food by throwing it out, they would reduce carbon emissions by 40%, as compared to the measly 5% they'd save by forgoing all airplane travel. 

The next day I travelled to London and got to watch subjects undergo various types of cognitive testing after eating a specially nutritionally enhanced food. As always I felt rather wistful being back in a real lab, watching other people gather data. I desperately wanted to go to the bench and start whipping up experiments, but alas, that's just not part of my job any more. Apparently I am 'too valuable' to waste on simple benchwork, so all I get to do is paperwork. grrr...

While at the university, I had an interesting talk with the guy who's running the study for me. He's at exactly the same point of his career that I am at, meaning we finished grad school and post-doc work at the same exact times. Now he's settled into this kind of almost-faculty-but-not-quite role. But at least he's on his way, while I'm not too sure how I will progress as a scientist in the next few years. The only way to get promoted where I am is to become more business-y, and do even less research, which is kind of depressing. But still, at least I'd have more power on what research gets done, rather than having to beg clueless business managers to fund studies through dumbed down presentations. 

After the monitoring visit, I had the rest of the afternoon to wander around London, which was mostly spent shopping for stuff I can't get in the Netherlands. So I bought English books for me and Henry, some non-muesli cereal and some underwear (Okay, you can get all these things in the Netherlands, but selection just isn't as good--actually, once you've been to a Marks and Spencer underwear dept you'll never want to go any where else). It definitely helps that (because of the incredibly devalued British pound) everything's a lot cheaper in London than in Europe. 


Books read: (I haven't done this for a while, I'm going to leave stuff out I know it)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen-- I read this for the book club I just joined, but wouldn't you know I missed the meeting where we discussed this, since I was in London. Still, I read this novel last when I was 18, and it was great realizing how much more there was to it than girl-meets-obnoxious-boy-yet-falls-for-him-anyways. This time I got to appreciate all the excruciating social observations everyone was making about each other. Honestly, it didn't seem like there was anything else for gentry to do than gossip and form opinions about one and another! 

Chocolat-by Joanne Harris--I've never seen the movie but a woman from my book club said this was her favorite book, so how could I not try it? It was a bit too twee for me, where this witch-like woman shows up in a French town of disgruntled people and solves all their problems through chocolate. Like Mary Poppins for adults, but even more heavy-handed.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry--This is supposedly a best-seller right now in the US, but honestly it was jut as dumb as Chocolat. This witch-like woman, who can predict the future by reading lace, returns to her hometown of Salem, MA and is forced to uncover 'the dark secrets of her family's past" Dun-dun-DUH!!! In terms of frothy plot-twists, you name it and this book has got it: Suicides and incest and murder and alcoholism and weird switched-at-birth stuff. Whew! Still, I got through it just because I have so few books available that I can't just give up on them like I used to.

Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth 
Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan-- Wow, talk about great kids' books! I got these for Henry, who's addicted to the series, but I love reading them too. Way better than Harry Potter in my opinion. Lots of great adventure, sacrifice and surprises (plus jokes!)
Too bad the series is now done too---will have to get Henry hooked on something else now, but what? What could possibly be as good?

Currently reading: Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes
Spindle's End by Robin McKinley (I was so excited to see this at the used bookstore in London, since I didn't realize she had published another book since that awful vampire novel from a few years ago. So far this book is much more like her old stuff-phew!)

 So this past weekend we went to Ireland to investigate the progress of the country house my mom is building near the coast of Cork (and also to visit some family).

Of course there were the usual minor catastrophes. I had business in Germany that day so I was arriving at 10 PM, while Ted and Henry got tto Ireland around 6 PM. But then Ted forgot his credit card so my cousin had to take a taxi to the airport and get the rental car I had reserved for us (and drive it to Dublin). My flight was so turbulent that everyone clapped when we finally made it to the ground, yet ---even while I was rapturously appreciating the glory of being alive--I was still too cheap to take a taxi. The bus took over an hour to get to my cousin's house, but it did bring back great memories of late night drunken bus-rider behavior from when I lived in Ireland. I have to admit, being 6 months pregnant amidst all the carousers was not ideal. 

I forced Henry and Ted to walk around Dublin the next morning but Ted was not impressed, saying it was just like the cheesier sections of Brooklyn...ouch! Is this what the boom times have done to Ireland? We were soon to find out as we embarked upon our 5 hour drive through Waterford, Wexford, and Tipperary. The fact is--boom times have done practically nothing to Irish countryside, which is still a mess of tiny, death-defying roads interspersed with cute little villages and farms. Ted was practically having a heart attack dodging the trucks and SUVS while remembering to stay on the left hand side of the road (which sometimes was less than two car widths). In fact, while trying to swerve out of the way we ended up damaging our wheel almost to the point of puncture. Meanwhile Henry was carsick and I was gripping my seat with nervous tension.


Finally we arrived at Youghal, a pretty seaside town, where my mother's builder put us up for the night in a house attached to his.The idea was that we were supposed to help chose interior fixtures etc. for the house. Nothing doing. The builder was pretty adamant about EVERYTHING. He was classically Irish in the way he dodged all requested with stories of previous houses he had built which went all wrong once the flighty, artistically challenged owners started making choices. Still the house was nice. 



Once we saw that the builder was doing a good job and had pretty okay aesthetic taste in houses, we decided to go off sight-seeing for the rest of our trip. We drove to the beach and ran around acting silly. Then we went to Lismore Castle (former home of one of the most famous Irish scientists Robert Boyle and where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queen). Afterwards, we tromped up a very steep mountain in Waterford. Finally, we had really bad Indian food (where even the curry tasted like candy). The next day we set off for west Cork and County Killarney. I was quite amazed to see how different Ireland looked in the wild western region (as compared to the green, cultivated pastures I was used to). After a whole day of driving we spent the night at my aunt and uncle's house. Henry was given a bow and arrow set by my uncle and the next thing you know Henry's asking me when we can visit their house again. I wonder that myself....

 I know it sounds silly, but I have a serious addiction for junkie memoirs: books like a Million Little Pieces or Tweak or Naked Lunch.

I’m pretty sure it’s one of those schadenfreude types of addiction, where I get a real rush from someone else’s misfortune. Does it sound pathological how repelled I get by someone’s life falling apart from drug abuse, yet at the same time buoyed by this heady relief that I am not them?

I have never used any addictive drug like cocaine, amphetamine or heroin or even cigarettes (though I’ll admit to having used less classically addictive substances like pot). I made an especial effort not to try any drug like that when I had the chance mostly because I am absolutely certain I would love the feeling of those types of ‘hard’ drugs. I even have dreams where I get so hooked on cocaine that I wake up wanting a hit of something I’ve never actually taken. But I can so imagine how good it would feel, how much better it would be than anything I have going on in my life right now. And I already have a hard time putting off pleasure in order to get things done. For instance, I’ll sometimes take a day off from work just to finish a novel, because I can’t seem to make myself put it down and do the responsible thing.

So, yes, it’s fun to feel slightly superior and relieved that I never let myself get addicted. At the same time I get a deep sensation of horror because I know I could be so close to messing up my life that way. And weirdly enough, even if I didn’t become instantly addicted to a drug the first time I took it, I’m pretty sure I would forever long for it, feel incomplete without it and generally be even more discontent with my regular pleasures like reading. Who needs that?[1]

At the same time, even when I’m reading about the horror of someone losing everything good in their life: job, friends, family, I’m also a little jealous of them. Because they know they really want something and will do anything to get it. I want to be like that: I want to be so obsessed and addicted to something I’ll work like a dog to get it. Which leads me to my favorite type of biography: the obsessed genius biography. Those are the people that managed themselves to get addicted to their work and it made them great. How does one do that? How do I force myself to become so into something that there’s nothing better to do?

I keep on imagining that there must be some sort of pill or procedure that you can take that will create a strong association to the type of work you want to become obsessed with.  I could imagine this working well at first with an addictive drug like cocaine, where you only let yourself use it when you’re going to do work. But then the problem is that cocaine is so powerful that it starts to get out of control pretty quickly and you just want to use it all the time. What about a weaker dopamine uptake transporter like the antidepressant Wellbutrin? I sometimes read case studies where patients on certain antidepressant treatments report actually enjoying work for the first time in their lives. Oh sure, it could just be that they’re not depressed any more and so everything in their life is more enjoyable. But still, it makes me wonder all the same…..

 

 Right now I have a parasite growing inside me that is basically taking all the best of the nutrients and calories I am eating. So much so that, if I were starving, this parasite would still be almost normal weight while I might be on the brink of death. Evolution has pretty much made certain that this parasite, i.e. the next generation, will always get the best resources since they have the most to gain from them. After all, these nutrients are required to build a body that will last them until they reach child-bearing age. My requirement for nutrients need only last until my children are able to survive on their own. I become expendable the moment I give birth to the next generation.

Children are designed to be parasites even after they're born. It's the same argument as during pregnancy: they need the resources more than I do. So does it make sense that children would show altruistic behavior? Would they really help and share resources willingly? Would there be an evolutionary reason for them to develop this trait? Well, obviously there's an evolutionary reason not for them to be complete brats, so that parents will want to sacrifice endlessly for them, but I'm not talking about general behavior. I'm talking about the pure spirit of helping others when you don't have to.
One supposed example of such altruistic behavior has been reported by a psychology grad student, who repeatedly dropped objects in front of toddlers, who repeatedly picked them up and handed them back. Now maybe the toddlers are spontaneously being helpful, or perhaps they are just mirroring actions they have seen with their parents. Another study published this year showed that when children 3-4 years of age are given the choice of giving a partner (another child) a candy at no cost to themselves, only a small percentage will do it. After all, why should they bother to help someone else? This is the same behavior seen in young apes as well. It's only when children turn 7 or 8 do they decide to give candy to another child (but will seldom choose to give the partner more candy than they themselves receive). I guess the idea here is that small children go from a selfish to an egalitarian outlook, where they recognize that it's good to share resources equally, but it's pretty much beyond them to imagine sharing resources unequally (giving another child 2 pieces of candy instead of 1 even if you yourself will always get just 1 piece of candy). So are these children learning to be fair out of a sense of moral justice? Well, not quite since this study also showed that the 7-8 year old children were more likely to share candy with other partners from their own school, rather than from a different school. This demonstrates an understanding that reciprocation is more likely when they share with children they will see again rather than with children they won't see again. 
Some other random findings: only children were more likely to share, which may indicate their greater need to establish friendships with other children, since they have no sibling to depend on. Also, boys were more likely to share with other children from their school, showing that boys have more of a 'pack' mentality than girls.

So I'm still not sure if true altruism is seen in children. I think children become very smart socially very early on, because they have to in order to develop relationships that help them in the long run (i.e. extra-parental relationships). 

 I just saw the best Austen movie ever. And it's not even a film based on any of her books. Nor is it about Austen herself (God, that "Becoming Jane" movie fiasco was soooo painful to watch).

In fact the movie I'm referring to is about a modern day woman and huge Pride and Prejudice fan, Amanda Price, who opens a door in her bathroom and suddenly finds herself at the beginning of the beloved novel (right when the Bingleys first move in). Of course comic shenanigans and zany plot twists ensue as Amanda tries to figure out where the main title character, Elizabeth, has disappeared to, how to explain her presence to the Bennetts and whether it's a bad idea to fall in love with Darcy herself.

It's the exact kind of fantasy scenario I've longed for many times after reading an especially good novel, and the way modern day perceptions are entwined with the classic Pride and Prejudice story was done just perfectly. The screenwriters even riffed a little bit on the BBC production where Elizabeth catches Darcy taking a dip in one of the main pools in the Pemberly estate.

So I'm highly recommending that all Austen fans run out and rent or buy Lost in Austen. It's the best movie (ahem--sorry--mini-series) I've seen in a long time. 


Actually, I've been having a very nice April so far. My sister and my nephew came and visited for a week, and we toured tulips in Keukenhof, shopped in Delft, and visited cheesy windmill-and-wooden-shoe-strewn Dutch tourist trap, Zan Schans (and the completely untouristy but very cool Peter the Great museum). Then I went to Brussels with my friend Catherine to a comic book museum and today I had Easter Brunch and Sauna with my friend Brigitte. I keep thinking I should get some work done but not quite yet....

 I just looked up the verb "to shanghai someone" and it apparently refers the practice of forceably conscripting sailors to go on particularly arduous ocean voyages (where Shanghai was a frequent destination).

Anyways, I wasn't so much conscripted to Shanghai, more like I finagled my way into it.
This is rather ironic as I didn't like it at all when I first went there last June, but since then it's really grown on me. In fact, I was quite sad realizing I probably wouldn't be back for a year or more when I left this past Sunday. 
what really helped this time was staying in a much nicer section of Shanghai, the French concession, which looks a little like a decrepit European city (maybe Bulgaria or somewhere like that), that used to be quite nice 200 years ago. So it had a lot more trees than other areas of Shanghai and plenty of crumbling mansions and small little boutiques run by proprietors with very odd taste in clothing. Actually, the clothing isn't that odd, it's just overly frilly, lacy and complicated. Shanghai women dress much more girly than Europeans or Americans, wearing high heels all the time with garishly patterned dresses full of sequins and ribbons. Maybe it's because communist China tried to make everyone wear drab uniforms for the last 40 years or so and this is the resulting backlash.
Another thing I noticed is that there is just a ridiculous variety of cheap, delicious, fattening food there, and yet no one is fat. At almost every meal i had with Chinese colleagues, I ate less than everyone else, even though I'm pregnant and twice the size of many of the women. Is it is really just a metabolism difference? Or maybe Chinese people move around more than I do? I wonder...

Anyways, I thought it was going to be a mellow trip of monitoring this study but it was a lot busier than I thought. Every day was chockful of meetings with psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists. Chinese universities and hospitals are especially interesting to visit since they always seem to be this polyglot of old nasty buildings which look like they should be condemned, coupled with fancy new additions filled with state of the art equipment like fMRI machines and transcranial magnetic stimulators. Even the traditional Chinese medicine hospital was super-moderne and done up with devices, which surprised me until I realized that all the traditional doctors also performed Western medicine as well. And yet-- the 2 types of medicine are so different in theory and approach. How does a doctor decide when to fix someone's yang or chi with herbs and cupping, or when to just give them an antidepressant or antibiotic?

So I only had one real day of sight-seeing, so I went to see the Yu Yuan gardens in the heart of this old Chinatown section. I've never seen such crowds as on those streets, all pushing each other about as they shopped, and ate street food like candied beef. But then, as soon as I entered the gardens, all the noise from crowds and cars disappeared and I could almost imagine myself as a Chinese imperial warlord strolling in these grottoed courtyards, watching the gold and pearl carp swim in murky ponds. 
Then I went to this hipster, vintage clothing shopping district of Shanghai (Jinxian and Shanxi roads) and bought up all sorts of silly outfits and knickknacks because they were too cheap to resist. Then finally, I went to a super-mall multiplex where I had an hour-long massage (with free snacks) for 8 dollars. Yes, I was really starting to like Shanghai. Though the city is just way too big and chaotic for me to ever want to live there, I could now see how people could be happy, even with the crowds, poverty and decrepitude. 

So now I'm back in the Netherlands, feeling relieved to be home but still slightly antsy, like I missed out on a lot of sights and activities and need to go there again soon. But I won't . Instead, I will think about spring coming and my sister arriving next week, and how nice Holland is when the tulips are blooming. There, that's a good thought to end on.

 In two days I'm going to Shanghai so I imagine I'll be having lots of 3 AM livejournal entries next week-if I can log into livejournal that is. (I heard China censors most blogging sites.)

Today I worked at home, which was a minor disaster since a) I constantly found excuses to get up and wander around the house doing odd-jobs b) I was constantly hungry, rummaging through cabinets and the fridge for snackfood that doesn't exist c) I just had a talk with my friend last night about not being so stressed out about work, and learning to enjoy the moment. Thus I felt like I was wasting my life trying to get stuff done that wouldn't really amount to much anyways. For example:  I can't even think of anything to write about this week since all I did was work!!! Not very memorable....

Then today I was listening to this audiobook called "The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Place on Earth", where this reporter interviewed natives of supposedly happy countries like Switzerland and Thailand. I was especially struck by one Thai's observation that her countrymen were happy because they know how to make the workplace fun, to not take everything so seriously, since it's really important to enjoy your job and realize that the little things that happen in your day make the best happiness.

So what little things happened today? Well, I did have a very nice bike ride to a cute Dutch village, Zwente, while listening to this audiobook. We also got this nice package in the mail today of socks Ted's aunt knitted for us. I've never had homemade socks before and they felt quite nice! And the cutest thing of all were these little tiny socks she also sent for the baby I'm expecting in August. Ted was particularly delighted over them, he's such a sucker for small adorable things like puppies and whatnot.
Now I just have to make sure I write a thank you note like a proper adult!

Books read: (hmm, I can already tell I'm not going to remember all of them)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell--a rather peculiar book; basically a series of narratives from the 1800's to thousands of years in the future, that first goes forward in time and then backwards, rather like peeling an onion from only one direction. But the writing is brilliant and very insightful about human nature, especially the last chapter. It really does put things in perspective when you imagine so many generations of people connecting to each other in small, unexpected ways. Who will I connect with thousands of years from now?

The Museum Guard by Howard Norman --Argh, quite an annoying book! About a woman who wants to take on the character of person she saw in a Dutch painting. Honestly, this novel had such a cool premise and the author really just made it slog on and drained it of any meaning. Sigh--well I saw on Amazon that other people liked it--so maybe I'm missing something.....but I doubt it.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Ford--Wow, this was an incredibly depressing book but very worth reading. Funny--to contrast it with the book above--the premise for this one sounded awful: a man and his wife who are bored with their suburban normalcy who plot to move to Paris but ultimately destroy themselves with their own longings. Yet, this author knew how to make me care even when I didn't want to. At the book's end the wife realizes she doesn't know what she wants or who she is, and that was the moment I truly identified with her. But then she does something completely unexpected with this realization-- and it made me realize how many choices we have as human beings. (Even though most of us are afraid to realize all the choices, since it does mean letting go of who we think we are, or want other people to believe we are.)

Interpreter of Maladies by Jumpa Lahiri--Ah, Jumpa! You are so talented and yet that was all I could think about when I read this book--wow, she's so highly regarded and this book won a Pulitzer-- yet most of the stories felt give or take to me. I did see lots of parallels with the Indian characters feeling homesick after moving to America, since that's the same way I feel about moving to the Netherlands. Yet the characters all seemed so similar and situations too calculated. Still, I did like all the food descriptions. I really want some good Indian food now!

Okay, I must've read other books but I'm too tired to remember now--a sign I should go back to bed

 Lately I've been thinking a lot about decision-making. And reading a lot of neuroscience papers on decision-making mechanisms of the brain. 

It started off because of this book I've been reading called "The Mind Wide Open" Steven Johnson. He's a pop science writer who's a little bit less flashy than Malcolm Gladwell but writes the same kind of high concept science books like "Ghost Map", which described how the field of disease epidemiology started with a cholera epidemic in London. I like his books overall, but I didn't realize how irritated I'd become with him when he wrote about my own field, neuroscience.

In "The Mind Wide Open" he made a lot of supposedly eye-opening statements like how our brains are boxes of chemicals giving emotions, which frankly just made me cringe. It's the kind of thing everyone says after their first hit of whatever drug they experimented with as teenagers. He was also fond of going about how we should rely more on our amygdalas , which he dubbed the emotional centers of the brain even though it's a lot more complicated than that. His reasoning was that our amygdalas were storing subconscious emotional memories  that were more useful in decision-making than our over-thinking frontal cortices, which muddle everything up with logic. He gave an example of this recounting how, while trying to guess facial expressions on an autism test, he did better with his initial gut choices rather than trying to decipher the expressions with logic. Hello? That's one example but then there's a million others where your gut response will just get you into trouble. Ever heard of road rage or impulse shopping?

Then he had a big discussion on how great it was to listen to your 'id' amygdala in the closing chapter at the end, where he compared Freudian psychology to modern day neuroscience. The idea was that Freudian repressed memories were actually ingrained memories of our amygdala, which subconsciously influenced our lives by trying to subvert our 'ego' frontal cortices. He then went on to say that our cortexes really had no idea of how to make us happy, it was just the amygdalas that knew how. Unfortunately, our amygdalas  are too detrimental to our overall survival (and procreation of offspring) to ever gain enough control to let us be happy. So our cortices always have the upper hand and thus we are unhappy. That's also supposedly why alcohol is so enjoyable, because it disinhibits our cortex-mediated strangeholds on our fun-loving amygdala.

I could see his points. After all his examples did fit neatly into his overall theses and the Freudian-neuroscience emotion vs logic and amygdala vs. cortex did have some nice parallels. But it also got me angry because he simplified a lot of things to get to this nice 'just-so' story.

For one thing, the cortex isn't really all that logical. It's also very emotional and biased on its own. Johnson seems to have this idea that you had to have your amygdala lighting up to get emotion and if your cortex is suppressing it then you're not feeling as much emotional. Well, I disagree because he seems to be defining emotion AS the amygdala being active. I think emotion is a lot more complicated than that.

After all, what is it that you're really feeling when you feel an emotion? It's your body, your peripheral body making your heart pound or your muscles tensing up when you're really fearful or excited, or your breathing slowing down and your muscles relaxing when you're feeling content. Even sadness is described mostly as a body feeling such as a heart-ache, because your heart really is experiencing pain through release of cytokines. You don't need your amygdala to feel emotions. Your cortex can cause body sensations which translate into emotions without involving the amygdala at all. Granted, the amygdala is often activated during strong emotions, but not always. 

Then today I see this article about how emotional decision-making leads to happiness. I got annoyed all over again because the quoted researchers try to point out that the consistency of consumer decisions is supposed to be the same thing as making the right decision, and then use an example of how buying a house for the re-sale value isn't going to make you as happy as buying a house for purely aesthetic reasons. Once again I disagree, since the fact is that, maybe as gut reaction choices subjects were happy with their decisions when asked about them a short while later, but what about the long-term happiness prospects for those decisions? How are you going to feel about the aesthetically-pleasing house when you can't get a good resale value for it? How do you figure out what kind of happiness are you after? Long-term happiness or short-term happiness? How do you live with decisions that don't make you happy in the short run but do make you happy 1 year later? Is it still happiness then? Can your brain still get the same thrill from it as doing something right this second, like eating chocolate, which gives happiness.

It reminds me of those studies that looked at delayed reward capacity in kids and those with the best impulse control were the happiest and most successful as adults. But are they happy/ or do they just think they're happy because their long-term decision-making skills gave them more success, but maybe their level of happiness isn't the same as people who took the short-term happiness routes instead but are not as outwardly successful. All I know is that my brain gets annoyed with both my short-term emotional decisions (e.g. "I don't feel like working so I'll procrastinate on the internet or gossip with a friend") AND my long-term emotional decisions (e.g. "I'm scared of all the work a baby requires but I know having a child will give me happiness in the long run). Grrr...

Wow, rambling neuroscience post at 3 in the morning. Never a good idea, but oh well, at least my amygdala is happy with all the irrationality in this journal entry. 

So I thought I'd post some of the Paris pictures

 This past Saturday was my 34th birthday (one of my friends congratulated me by pointing out that I was now older than Jesus). I knew I had to make something special happen or I would fall into one of those post-birthday melancholias where I'd go over all the things I needed to do in my life before I died. 

So what did I plan? A trip to Paris to see the Catacombs, a huge underground network caverns filled with millions of Parisian paupers' bones. Yes, nothing like seeing piles of skulls in elaborate patterns of hearts, spiral and crosses to make me REALLY THINK about what I wanted to do with my time left on earth.

But seriously, I didn't go to be macabre and morbid, I just couldn't quite believe the place existed. I needed to see the Catacombs for myself (and drag my husband and son along with me). Unfortunately, I overestimated my son's appreciation of grossness. I thought he'd be fascinated by all the bones and spookiness, but instead he was very weirded out by it. He kept urging us to move faster, to get back aboveground as soon as possible. The problem was that we had no idea how many rooms were needed to hold the  bones of 2 million Parisian. So we kept going forward, only to encounter more rooms stacked with bones resembling altars or pillars or painstakingly crafted wall 'mosaics'. It was interesting noting how different peoples' skulls look- you can almost tell what they looked like alive. Some had very prominent ridgebones with nicks and bumps from past injuries, while others were perfectly smooth. A lot of them were pretty small, which was depressing, since that meant they had probably been teenagers or younger when they died. 

Interspersed with the bones were metal or stone plaques with verses about death from famous French poets. Apparently the Catacombs were made by using old limestone quarries below Paris to house the bones that had been tossed in paupers' cemeteries--cemeteries that were dismantled either due to plague fears or desire to use the real estate for more lucrative purposes. So these quarries became kind of like an art installation dedicated to death, where rich Victorians could go on tours by candlelight and freak themselves out. Which is I guess what we were doing. All I can say is at least we didn't go see Jim Morrison's grave! 

Nothing like being underground surrounded by bones for a couple of hours to make one appreciate the finer things in life. So the rest of the weekend was spent in a pleasant blur of eating out and walking around all the gorgeous Parisian landmarks like the Louvres, Arc de Triomphe, Tuileries and the Eiffel Tower. Henry kept us amused by his odd little skits he would put on with his gloves, the "aliens from Neptune and Pluto" who were only disguised as mere gloves. 

We took the Thalys high speed train to get to Paris, which had very nice getting there in 3 hrs. But on the way back something happened to the train tracks so we had to switch over to a regular intercity train. We didn't get back until midnight and Henry was VERY cranky. C'est la vie!

 I went to this big party Ted's work threw at a warehouse last night in Delft. It was like being in an updated version of Logan's Run. Everyone there was under 30, most looked like they were in college. The overall scene was carefree hipster cool, while I felt like a positively ancient 33 year old in my sensible workday outfit, all haggard and frazzled since my headlight for my bike failed halfway to Delft.

I had basically cycled blind for an hour in Dutch countryside, where both sides of the road had big ditches full of water (they're supposed to be canals but that seems too grandiose a word). Every time a car came towards me I was forced to stop since 1. I didn't have a light and was afraid i'd get hit and 2. the car high beams would make it so everything but the headlights was pitch black. By the time I got to the party I was a nervous wreck and only stayed for an hour. Luckily I borrowed Ted's light to go home, but now have made a firm resolution to always carry 2 headlights. I used to think Dutch light pollution was so bad that headlights were practically an afterthought. I was wrong.

Now it's Saturday afternoon. I'm supposed to write a review for a paper on mitochondrial function in Huntington's Disease but can't seem to force myself to do it. I also have my own paper which I need to revise according to reviewers' comments, yet I'm so irritated by some of them I've also been putting this off for the last 3 weeks. Nothing like having things hanging over your head to really take the sparkle out of other activities. Speaking of which, I just read about this cool-looking book on procrastination that I'm itching to get my hands on. There's this temptation to order it through my work library since it is something I could argue is useful for productivity/research. We'll see!

Oh,wow, Ted just came back with a guitar he bought downtown and a songbook of every U2 song ever. It's going to be a fun evening!

 It's sad but true that the only time I feel like writing is when it's 2 in the morning and I'm not coherent enough to do anything else.

So nothing really exciting happened this week, thus I should probably recount my trip to London....

For starters, it was bitterly cold. Not the kind of weather that makes you want to traipse around the city, window-shopping and the like. After finishing up my ''business'' meeting at University College London at around 1 PM, I was feeling a little apprehensive of walking around the whole afternoon in the cold. So I went to my hotel and checked in--and the next thing I know I've fallen asleep and, when I wake up, it's dark outside. Clever me! I'm so groggy for the first hour that even walking to Sainsbury's for a belated lunch, and then Starbucks fails to wake me up.

My hotel is right next to Camden market, which had seemed like a cute idea at the time, but the leather and bongs atmosphere was a bit too much for me to handle. If I had been in a different mood I would've enjoyed all the streetpunks and hippie throwbacks. And I was too fixated on trying to find internet so I could contact my Irish cousins about dinner that night. Finally, after a lot of booting up my computer in random cafes and stores I found out I was supposed to meet them at this fancy vegetarian restaurant. 

Only in London (or maybe NYC) could one find such an over-the-top, posher-than-posh veggie place. There were these amazing architectural starters of multi-colored layers of yumminess like goat-cheese, artichoke hearts and arugula. And then the main courses had 2 gazillion garnishes of sauces and sprigs and God-knows-what-else, that made each bite of something as basic as ravioli become this whole new taste experience. My cousins are major foodies, so we kept tasting each other's stuff and effusing ecstasy with every mouthful.

Joy is expecting twins, so we spent a lot of time talking about that. And Ailbhe is doing a graduate degree at UCL in environmental planning of large-scale projects. She just moved to London from Dublin in the fall but already has scads of friends and things to do. Once again I experienced HUGE, OVER-POWERING jealousy at their cool lives, wondering once again how could I wrangle a move to London. Even just going to the supermarket in the UK is such a more satisfying experience than Dutch stores, where I'm just so underwhelmed by the lack of vegetables available, the overemphasis of all things potato and mystery meat paste. Sigh. 

So, the next day: galleries! I went to the National Gallery and then the National Portrait Gallery, which really were amazing. I especially loved the temporary exhibit of finalists in a portrait photography contest in the NPG. There was a hilarious one of a woman with quintuplet babies, where babies were lying all over the bed, the floor, in a chair. It was also interesting to notice, when I was in the National Gallery, that I especially gravitated towards the Dutch paintings.

Actually, the main event of the whole trip was to fulfill a 3-year-long dream of watching the musical Wicked, which had been playing in London for the past year but was always 1. too expensive 2. sold out. So I guess the recession does ahave small bright side, since I had no trouble getting cheap tickets. But I hadn't anticipated how long it was. I was enjoying myself so much that it almost didn't occur to me that 3 hrs had gone by and the production showed no sign of ending soon. Finally, I had to leave to catch my flight back to the Netherlands. That's when the fiasco started: all the Tube lines were wonky, and then the Gatwick Express train wasn't running, so I had to take a bus to the airport. Traffic on a Saturday night in London is horrendous. By the time we got to the terminal, the plane was taking off in 15 minutes and the easyJet people told me the flight was closed and the next one wasn't until tomorrow. I was so frustrated that I decided that I was just going to sleep at the airport terminal rather that night than go anywhere in a bus again. But then another woman, who had also missed the flight, saw that I had pre-printed my boarding pass. So she told me I should just try to run for it anyways. So run I did! I barreled my way through security and 50 miles of gates, managing to arrive right when they were closing the doors to the plane. Yay! 
Of course, as soon as the plane takes off the turbulence was so bad that I immediately start imagining that I've just narrowly made it onto the one flight which is destined to go down into the North Sea. 

But then the weather gets better, and I'm back in good old Vlaardingen by 11 PM.
Nothing like some adrenaline and near-disaster to make me appreciate the Netherlands and home.

 ...to see the Queen?
Hmmm, I knew that, when I got back from my lovely US vacation with my family and friends, I'd get really depressed and grumpy. So when I heard about this business trip I needed to take to London during my first week back I thought, "Ah ha! This will be boost to get me over my distaste for having to settle back into normal run-of-mill life.
So I decided to give myself an extra day in London after the meeting, just to hang out and cruise galleries, shop etc.
But what should I do with my day? Go to the Tate Britain (since haven't been since I was in college) ? Or the National Portrait Gallery (since I've always wanted to go and they're having an Annie Leibovitz exhibition)? Tower of London and Parliament and all the cheesy attractions I've always wanted to see for myself? I feel weirdly pressured to make the most of my time since, as far as I can tell, the absurdly cold Dutch winter has completely robbed my desire to leave the house AT ALL. Once I'm done with my London trip, it will be Vlaardingen, Vlaardingen for weeks and weeks. Lately I can barely force myself to go grocery shopping after I get home from work. If I had half a brain I would go do a class just to make myself leave the house (though I know once I committed myself I would resent having to go anywhere for something I didn't SUPREMELY ENJOY. Actually, if I'm completely honest with myself, the only thing I really enjoy these days is a very good book. So maybe I should try, once again, to find a book club near Rotterdam. How hard can that be?

Books read this vacation (please let me remember!)

THE GENIUS ENGINE: Where Memory, Reason, Passion, Violence, and Creativity Intersect In the Human Brain by Kathleen Stein
This was a nice neuro book on how the cortex shapes our emotions, memories and motivations. The most interesting thing was learning that when you overly tax your cortex with trying to remember things like telephone numbers or other random info, your limbic system gets to take over and thus drives you towards stuff you normally can inhibit: like reaching for that cupcake, or saying something mean to someone. 

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr 
I know this was a YA best seller but I really struggled to get through it. There was just so much extraneous writing and the heroine felt very blah to me. I was barely rooting for her towards the end. 

Skinny by Ibi Kaslik
Sort of a literary YA novel about two sister, one who has anorexia and survivor's guilt over her dead father. This started out interesting and then just felt too unbelievable to be taken seriously

Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway
Ah! Finally, a good YA with hilarious dialogue.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Yes, this YA book won awards and I can understand why. It's very funny and moviing. Almost too short and sweet. I liked how the native American protag could criticise his culture and the reservation but then also be very proud of them.

Tweak by Nic Sheff
This is another 'hot' YA book, a memoir about a middle class teen addicted to drugs, mostly crystal meth. It was very interesting the way this guy just repeatedly cleaned up and fell off the wagon, and how he described his thought process when he decided to go back to doing drugs, even when he knew exactly where it would take him. Very affecting!

Factory Girls by Leslie Chang
This is a non-fiction book about the new generation of rural Chinese who are migrating to factory towns to hit it big during the last decade's incredible economic book in Asia. Since I went to China twice this year, it's really interesting for me to understand what it feels like to be a Chinese person and this book gave me a very good idea--at least I think it did!

okay, there were maybe 4 or 5 other books that I can't remember the titles to--more neuro books, more memoirs, more YA. Hmm. Anyways, it was a nice reading vacation. And I'm happy that I have at least 20 more books I brought back from Seattle--that should tide me over until spring!

I never wanted to have any children because I knew it would be all my fault if they ended up screwed up as I was (or as screwed up as I thought I was at age ten or eleven, when I first started seriously thinking about having children).

I guess this negative view of child-rearing is partly due the perfectionistic attitude that kids often have about their own future lives: I was pretty sure my life would very good as long as I stuck with things I felt like I could control, such as choosing a career and husband. But nobody got to chose their own kids. In fact it was your job to make sure they ended up the way you wanted them to...what a daunting, insurmountable task! What a lot of work! No thank you! Besides, I knew I was too selfish to do a good job. Years of baby-sitting experience taught me that I'd rather do almost anything instead of taking care of a child.

Ironically enough I ended up having my son Henry at age 23, way before anyone else I knew had children (at least people in my age group). Even more ironically, a week before I gave birth I joined a lab that studied prenatal drug exposure on brain development. I ended up spending the next five years doing research on how mothers irreversibly damage their own children's brain before they were born. On top of that, I got to do some side research on how prenatal drug effects could be exacerbated by specific postnatal environment such as bad parenting. I had already had a lot of guilt about exposing my child to alcohol in utero (not a huge amount and only during the 1st trimester, but still enough to have legitimate concerns). It was even more painful to realize that my parenting might be messing up my child's brain even more.

Obviously I was trying to be a good parent, but it was difficult to feel like I was doing a good job while trying to get through grad school as a single mother (though I did have live-in support from my parents).  In fact, the more I read those parenting manuals about child-rearing, the more convinced I became that Henry was suffering from my bungled attempts at nurturing. Although I tried to be an attentive mother, I knew deep down inside I hadn't changed much since I was a child. I still wanted to read books more than play with Henry. Plus I was resentful of every of all the other twenty-somethings enjoying carefree lives of partying and free time. I was certain that Henry could somehow detect with his (partially damaged) toddler brain this resentment of mine. He was going to get screwed up even more.

Gradually, however, I got more relaxed about my parenting. After all, even while I learned about all the bad things that could happen to children's brains during development, I also learned about how incredibly resilient they are. There was some small reassurance that my training taught me how to provide an environment which gave the best odds for cognitive neurodevelopment. It was also heartening to see Henry grew up to be a pretty smart kid (though he is rather prone to my pessimistic outlook--you can't win 'em all).

It's been ten years since I had Henry and five years since I finished grad school. I'm still working on the cognitive neurodevelopment, and I still feel stunned when I think about how plastic and vulnerable a child's brain is, how singular experiences can shape a kid for life. Then again, I also realize how little we can control on how a child develops. We can provide a base environment of nurture, nutrition, and learning, but then the separate but interlocked hands of genes and the outside world take over. And then all I can do is hope (and keep learning!)

 Actually, I skied with my sister and her husband at Mt Rainier yesterday. It was lovely, lots of powder and snowing pretty hard but not too cold.
So that was my first day, now today is all about shopping, since everything here is so much cheaper than the Netherlands. 
I'll also be stopping off at the library to fill up on English books. I'm going to be in complete cocoon mode for the next few days. 
Even though the plane ride was rather hellacious (delayed by 2.5 hrs and then missing our connection in Chicago) it's so good to be here.

 Ted announces he going back to bed and that he doesn't want to be disturbed until 7 AM because, because he doesn't say anything for a minute, just makes this odd hand gesture like he's swimming somewhere. Meanwhile in the background Henry intones "because that's when the body and soul reunite!"