Helen Fisher在Ted演讲：爱情魔力背后隐藏的秘密

720

葬于提卡尔神庙。

按照玛雅碑文的说法，

他深爱着他的妻

子。

他为妻子修建了一座神庙，正对着提卡尔神庙。

每到

春分或秋分，

太阳在提卡尔神庙后升起，

而他妻子 的神庙

便浸浴在拖长的影子中。

到了下午落日之时，

他妻子的神

庙的影子也会完全遮罩在提卡尔神庙上。

直到

1300

年后的

今天，

这对恋人的陵墓依旧互相拥抱、亲吻。

Around

the

world,

people

love.

They

sing

for

love,

they dance for love, they compose poems and stories

about

love.

They

tell

myths

and

legends

about

love.

They

pine for love, they live for love, they kill for love,

and they die for love. As Walt Whitman once said, he

said,

I

would

stake

all

for

you.

Anthropologists

have

found

evidence

of

romantic

love

in

170

societies.

They've never found a society that did not have it.

世界各地的人都有不同的爱情。

人们为爱情歌唱，人

们因爱情起舞，

人们通过诗赋和故事来抒发爱情。

人们讲

述关于爱情的神话和传说。

人们渴望爱情，因爱而生，

人

们为爱着迷，甚至为爱而死。

沃尔特

.

惠特曼曾说过：

< br>

我

愿意为你赌上我的一切

!< /p>

人类学家在

170

个社会中发现了

爱情存在的证据。

爱情普遍地存在于每一个人类社会。

But love isn't always a happy experience. In one

study

of

college

students,

they

asked

a

lot

of

questions

about love, but the two that stood out to me the most

were,

really loved?

ever

dumped

somebody

who

really

loved

you?

And

almost

95

percent

of

both

men

and

women

said

yes

to

both.

Almost

nobody gets out of love alive.

但爱情并不总是愉快的经历。

在一项针对大学生的调

查中，

他们提出了很多关于爱情的问题，

其中的两个特别

让我印象深刻，

一个是

你曾经被你真心爱着的人拒绝过

吗

?

而另一个则是

你曾经拒绝过真心爱着你的人吗

?

对于 这两个问题，

有

95%

的人作出了肯定 的答复。

要活着走

出爱情几乎是不可能的。

So, before I start telling you about the brain, I

want to read for you what I think is the most powerful

love poem on Earth. There's other love poems that are,

of

course,

just

as

good,

but

I

don't

think

this

one

can

be

surpassed. It

was told

by

an anonymous Kwakiutl

Indian of southern Alaska to a missionary in 1896, and

here it is. I've never had the opportunity to say it

before.

loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires

of

my

love

for

you.

Pain

like

a

boil

about

to

burst

with

my

love

for

you,

consumed

by

fire

with

my

love

for

you.

那么，在开始讲述关于大脑的事情前，

我要读一段

在

我看来最富深情的情诗。

当然，很多情诗都很不错，

但我

认为它们都无法超越这首。

在

1896

年的南阿拉斯加，一位

不知名的夸扣特尔印第安人

把它讲述给了一名传教士。

这

是我第一次当众读它。

爱你之痛如熊熊烈焰穿透我的身体

;

对你如火一般的热恋让疼痛贯穿我的身体。

痛楚如沸水，

饱含我对你的爱，

爱的火焰将其蒸发殆尽。

I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of

your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain

and more pain -- where are you going with my love? I

am

told

you

will

go

from

here.

I

am

told

you

will

leave

me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I

said,

my

love.

Goodbye,

my

love,

goodbye.

Emily

Dickinson once wrote,

of hell.

millions of years of human evolution? How many people

around the world are dancing with elation at this very

minute?

Romantic

love

is

one

of

the

most

powerful

sensations on Earth.

我仍记得你对我说的话，

我想着你对我的爱，

它将我

的躯体撕裂。

疼痛，

更多的疼痛，

你要把我的爱带至何处

?

你对我说，你将从这里出发

;

你对我说，你将在这儿把我遗

弃。

我因此悲痛，因此失去知觉。

带上我的只言片语，我

的爱人

!

再见，吾爱，再见

!

艾米莉

.

狄金森曾写道，

人

因离别而品尝地狱

在人类百万余年的进 化过程中，

有多

少人曾遭受这样的痛苦

?

而此时此刻，

世界各地又有多少

人在尽情跳舞

?

爱情是世上最有力的感情。

So, several years ago, I decided to look into the

brain

and

study

this

madness.

Our

first

study

of

people

who were happily in love has been widely publicized,

so

I'm

only

going

to

say

a

very

little

about

it.

We

found

activity

in

a

tiny,

little

factory

near

the

base

of

the

brain

called

the

ventral

tegmental

area.

We

found

activity

in

some

cells

called

the

A10

cells,

cells

that

actually

make

dopamine,

a

natural

stimulant,

and

spray

it to many brain regions.

所以多年之前，我决定研究

大脑中的这种狂热的情感。

我们第一项对处在幸福爱恋中的人们的研究

得到了很好地

宣传，

因此我只简短地介绍一下。

我们发现 在大脑底部附

近有一块活跃的微小的区域

——腹侧背盖区。

其中活跃的

细胞称为

ApEn

细胞。

实际上，这种细胞制造了多巴胺——

一种天然的兴奋剂，

并将它散发到大脑的众多区域。

Indeed, this part, the VTA, is part of the brain's

reward system. It's way below your cognitive thinking

process. It's below your emotions. It's part of what

we

call

the

reptilian

core

of

the

brain,

associated

with

wanting,

with

motivation,

with

focus

and

with

craving.

In fact, the same brain region where we found activity

becomes active also when you feel the rush of cocaine.

准确地说来，这里腹侧背盖区是大脑奖励系统的一部分。

它运作在潜意识中，

也不受情绪控制。

腹侧背盖区也是被

我们称作爬虫类脑核的部分。

它关系到欲求、动机、

专注

和渴望。

事实上，这一片区域

在可卡因瘾发作时也会活跃

起来。

But romantic love is much more than a cocaine high

-- at least you come down from cocaine. Romantic love

is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense

of self. You can't stop thinking about another human

being.

Somebody

is

camping

in

your

head.

As

an

eighth-century Japanese poet said,

time when it ceases.

can get worse when you've been rejected.

但比起可卡因，爱情让它更加活跃——

至少你还能从

可卡因中回过神来。

爱情萦绕于心，占据着你。

你失去自

我意识，

不能自主地去想他

——他一直盘踞在你脑中。

就

如

8

世纪的一位日本诗人所说，

我的渴求永不停止。

爱< /p>

情是狂热的。

当你被抛弃之后，牵挂会更深。

So,

right

now,

Lucy

Brown

and

I,

the

neuroscientist

on our project, are looking at the data of the people

who were put into the machine after they had just been

dumped. It was very difficult actually, putting these

people in the machine, because they were in such bad

shape.

(Laughter)

So

anyway,

we

found

activity

in

three

brain regions. We found activity in the brain region,

in

exactly

the

same

brain

region

associated

with

intense romantic love.

我和项目组中的神经系统学家露西

.

布朗

当下正在研

究

被抛弃的人们的核磁共振测试数据。

但说服他们

进行

测验实在是困难，

因为他们心情实在是太糟了。

(

笑

)

总

之 ，我们在大脑中发现了三个与之有关的区域。

我们在那

块大脑区域，

也就是腹侧背盖区，

找到了与热恋相关的大

脑活动。

What

a

bad

deal.

You

know,

when

you've

been

dumped,

the one thing you love to do is just forget about this

human being, and then go on with your life -- but no,

you just love them harder. As the poet Terence, the

Roman poet once said, he said,

hotter

my

love.

And

indeed,

we

now

know

why.

Two

thousand

years

later,

we

can

explain

this

in

the

brain.

That

brain

system

--

the

reward

system

for

wanting,

for

motivation,

for

craving,

for

focus

--

becomes

more

active when you can't get what you want. In this case,

life's greatest prize: an appropriate mating partner.

这是多么坏的事情啊

!

当你被甩之后，

你会想着要忘

掉他，

并继续你的正常生活，

但事与愿违，你只会更爱他

了。

就像罗马诗人特伦斯曾说过的：

我的 祈求越少，我

的爱情便越炽烈。

时至今 日，

我们知道这是为什么了。

XX

年后的今天，我们能够解释大脑中的这一过程。

大脑中的

奖赏系统

与欲望、动机、渴望和专注有关，

它 在你不能得

到你所要的时，反而变得更加活跃。

倘若如此，生命中最

大的奖赏即是：

一个适当的约会对象。

We found activity in other brain regions also --

in

a

brain

region

associated

with

calculating

gains

and

losses. You know, you're lying there, you're looking

at the picture, and you're in this machine, and you're

calculating,

you

know,

what

went

wrong.

How,

you

know,

what have I lost? As a matter of fact, Lucy and I have

a little joke about this. It comes from a David Mamet

play, and there's two con artists in the play, and the

woman

is

conning

the

man,

and

the

man

looks

at

the

woman

and says,

on you.

core

of

the

nucleus

accumbens,

actually,

that

is

becoming

active

as

you're

measuring

your

gains

and

losses.

It's

also

the

brain

region

that

becomes

active

when you're willing to take enormous risks for huge

gains and huge losses.

我们发现大脑中

计算得失的区域也与爱情有关。

测试

者躺在核磁共振仪中，

看着昔日爱人的照片，

然后开始回

想到底是什么出错了。

我失去了什么

?

事实上，露西和我

对此开过一些玩笑。

在大卫

.

梅米特的一部剧中，