Our brains dictate our every move.
They’re the ones who spur us to study hard, so we can make something of ourselves, in order to better our communities.
They name our babies, choose our clothes, decide what we’re hungry for.
They make and break laws, organize protests, fritter away hours on social media, and give us the green light to binge watch a bunch of dumb shows when we could be reading War and Peace.
They also plant the seeds for Fitzcarraldo-like creative endeavors that take over our lives and generate little to no income.
We may describe such endeavors as a labor of love, into which we’ve poured our entire heart and soul, but think for a second.
Who’s really responsible here?
The heart, that muscular fist-sized Valentine, content to just pump-pump-pump its way through life, lub-dub, lub-dub, from cradle to grave?
Or the brain, a crafty Iago of an organ, possessor of billions of neurons, complex, contradictory, a mystery we’re far from unraveling?
Psychiatrist Dr. Karen Norberg’s brain has steered her to study such heavy duty subjects as the daycare effect, the rise in youth suicide, and the risk of prescribing selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors as a treatment for depression.
... continue reading