脑部扫描揭示婚姻背后的真相

脑部扫描揭示婚姻背后的真相 —— 2000年摄于艾丁湖，那时美国前副总统阿尔?戈尔与妻子蒂珀还看不出有任何问题。 阿尔和蒂珀田园诗般婚姻的戛然而止刚过去不久，而此事也给我们强烈的提醒 ——只有身处其中的人才能对他们的婚姻有着真正的了解。 事实也的确如此，甚至是我们平凡人的婚姻，绝大多数情况下，在外人看来都是 一个谜。 早在数年之前，婚姻研究者、加州大学伯克利分校心理生理学实验室主任罗伯特 •莱文森和他的合作者们就制作了一段以10对夫妇交谈和争吵为内容的视频。莱 文森博士已经知道其中的5对夫妇感情上出现了问题甚至到了要离婚的程度。他 将这段视频向包括牧师、婚姻治疗师、性爱科学家在内的200人进行展示，他们找出其中已出现裂纹的婚姻。结果是受试者们通常只能猜对一半。 “外人通常难以理解婚姻的状况”莱文森博士说道。但即使是这样，研究者们还是 对婚姻的走势产生愈发强烈的好奇。他们请来一些结婚多年的夫妻，并对他们进 行一系列实验室测查甚至进行了脑部扫描，想以此来一窥所谓至死不渝的爱恋的 奥秘。 加州大学圣塔芭芭拉分校的博士后比安卡•埃斯沃多的研究领域是性爱神经科 学。她正以那些结婚多年而仍处于热恋中的夫妻为对象进行一项研究。通过电话 调查，她收集到了274名有固定恋爱关系的男性和女性的数据，然后通过关系量 表来测量他们的婚姻满意度和爱情的强烈程度。 埃斯沃多博士最初估计只有一小部分结婚多年的夫妻仍保持着恋爱的激情，但结 果出乎她的意料，他们中居然有大约40%的人在浪漫度量表上得到了高分，而剩 下差不多60%也并不是都处于不快乐的状态。很多人的爱情虽然并不如当初的热 切，但仍有着较高的性爱满意度并深爱着对方。 在一项独立研究中，17名仍处于热恋状态的男女同意进行脑部扫描以探究持续 爱恋的原因。受试者的平均婚龄是21年，扫描时向他们展示配偶的照片，作为 对照，他们的两名朋友的照片随后被展示。 与看到朋友时的反应做比较，可以认为在看到配偶时激活的脑区即是与爱情相关 的区域。尽管这一区域与刚坠入爱河的人所得结果大致相同，但是研究人员还是 发现了些许不同：在老夫妇中，与深切依恋相关的脑区同时被激活了，这说明婚 姻的满意和婚姻的激情二者并不完全是两回事。 “他们既体验着婚姻的幸福感，同时又感受着相互依恋的恬静和安全感。”埃斯沃 多博士说道，“我认为这是项激动人心的结果。” 而这些老夫妻们是如何保持爱情之火长明的呢？很显然，不光在进行脑部扫描 时，他们在相处的生活中也不断地相互激发。 “他们仍保持着热切的爱慕和性爱的激情，”埃斯沃多博士说，“这是与戈尔夫妇所不同的，后者声称他们关系已经疏远了。” 的确，如果要说我们能从戈尔的例子中学到点什么的话，那就是——婚姻也是一项无止境的工作。 “这并不意味着你要为频繁的性爱而烦恼，但是适时地加强却是必要的。”华盛顿 长青州立大学的婚姻史学家提芬妮•昆茨如是说，“我认为戈尔事件并不是说明婚姻注定难逃一劫，而是给我们警示——你不能总是重复同一件事而应该多尝试一 些不同的体验，不要一味地将注意力只集中在婚姻本身。” 纽约州立大学石溪分校的研究结果表明：喜欢一块尝试新鲜事物的夫妇比那些总 是重复一成不变习惯的夫妇更快乐。对此的理论解释是新鲜的体验激活脑内多巴 胺系统，这一过程模拟了初坠爱河时脑内的化学过程。 在一项新的研究中，石溪分校的科学家们将让夫妇们一起玩无聊的或者激烈的视 频游戏，在这个过程中对大脑进行扫描。这项研究的目的是探究与爱人一起分享 新鲜而有挑战性的经历是如何改变脑内神经系统的激活过程的。 但对于没有脑部扫描设备的我们来说，仍有一些简单的来检测你的夫妻感情 是增长着还是因无聊令人烦恼。你可以问自己以下的问题：你的爱人提供给你多 少兴奋的体验？你的爱人多大程度上让你变得更好？在最近一个月中，你多久会 觉得你们的婚姻还处在热恋中？ 如果以上问题的并不令你满意，那么该是努力的时候了。从统计学的角度看， 离婚的风险在婚后10年即开始降低。根据宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的经济学 家贝齐•斯蒂文森的说法，美国人口局的最新数据显示，近来离婚人群中只有约 4%的夫妇婚龄超过40年。 同时值得注意的是，戈尔是70年代结的婚，他们那一代人比其他任何年龄段的 人更多地因为婚姻而争斗。斯蒂文森博士把他们称为“最擅长闹离婚的一代”。 我们在讨论戈尔离婚事件的时候，往往忽略了它带来的还有些应有的乐观。昆茨 教授回忆起她家隔壁的一对老夫妇，他们在七十多岁的时候有一次觉得特别厌倦 了彼此，于是他们在夏天分别坐在屋外草坪上正好方向相对的长椅上，昆茨接着 补充道：“我觉得这是种很好的办法，它让他们在到达生气甚至敌对的状态之前 能继续下去并重新开始。” 斯蒂文森博士也将戈尔离婚事件称为“半满玻璃杯的故事”。 “他们结婚40年，而且这场婚姻从众多方面看来都是成功的，”斯蒂文森说道，“他们选择了离婚可以说是不幸的。但事实上，当他们向前看时，都憧憬着一个没有 婚姻羁绊的光明的未来，这多少也算是他们对余生美好生活乐观的庆祝吧。” 本文作者塔拉•帕克•波普是纽约时报的专栏作家，也是《为了更好：优质婚姻的 科学》一书的作者，该书上月由Dutton出版社出版。 Researchers Study Brain Scans for Insight to Marriage - NYTimescom LAKE IDYLL In 2000, Tipper and Al Gore gave no sign of problems. More Photos ? By TARA PARKER-POPE Published: June 4, 2010 THE sudden breakup of Al and Tipper Gore?s seemingly idyllic marriage was the latest and among the sharpest reminders that the only two people who know what?s going on in a marriage are the two people who are in it. The truth is that most marriages, even our own, are something of a mystery to outsiders. Several years ago, a marriage researcher — Robert W. Levenson, director of the psychophysiology laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley — and his colleagues produced a video of 10 couples talking and bickering. Dr. Levenson knew at the time that five of the couples had been in troubled relationships and eventually divorced. He showed the video to 200 people, including pastors, marriage therapists and relationship scientists, asking them to spot the doomed marriages. They guessed wrong half the time. “People on the outside aren?t very good at telling how marriages are really working,” he said. Even so, academic researchers have become increasingly fascinated with the inner workings of long-married couples, subjecting them to a battery of laboratory tests and even brain scans to unravel the mystery of lasting love. Bianca Acevedo, a postdoctoral researcher at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara, studies the neuroscience of relationships and began a search for long-married couples who were still madly in love. Through a phone survey, she collected data on 274 men and women in committed relationships, and used relationship scales to measure marital happiness and passionate love. Dr. Acevedo expected to find only a small percentage of long-married couples still passionately in love. To her surprise, about 40 percent of them continued to register high on the romance scale. The remaining 60 percent weren?t necessarily unhappy. Many had high levels of relationship satisfaction and were still in love, just not so intensely. In a separate study, 17 men and women who were passionately in love agreed to undergo scans to determine what lasting romantic love looks like in the brain. The subjects, who had been married an average of about 21 years, viewed a picture of their spouse. As a control, they also viewed photos of two friends. Compared with the reaction when looking at others, seeing the spouse activated parts of the brain associated with romantic love, much as it did when couples who had just fallen in love took the same test. But in the older couples, researchers spotted something extra: parts of the brain associated with deep attachment were also activated, suggesting that contentment in marriage and passion in marriage aren?t mutually exclusive. “They have the feelings of euphoria, but also the feelings of calm and security that we feel when we?re attached to somebody,” Dr. Acevedo said. “I think it?s wonderful news.” So how do these older couples keep the fires burning? Beyond the brain scans, it was clear that these couples remained active in each other?s lives. “They were still very much in love and engaged in the relationship,” Dr. Acevedo said. “That?s something that seems different from the Gores, who said they had grown apart.” Indeed, if there is a lesson from the Gore breakup, it?s that with marriage, you?re never done working on it. “It?s not that you have to be constantly scared about your relationship, but you do have to renew it,” said Stephanie Coontz, a marriage historian at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. “I think the warning we should take from this is not that marriages are doomed, but that you can?t skate indefinitely and be doing different things and not really be paying attention to the marriage itself.” Research from Stony Brook University in New York suggests that couples who regularly do new and different things together are happier than those who repeat the same old habits. The theory is that new experiences activate the dopamine system and mimic the brain chemistry of early romantic love. In a new study, the Stony Brook scientists will have couples playing either a mundane or exciting video game together while their brains are being scanned.. The goal is to see how sharing a new and challenging experience with a spouse changes the neural activation of the brain. But for those of us without a brain scanner, there are simple ways to find out if your relationship is growing or vexed by boredom. Among the questions to ask yourself: How much does your partner provide a source of exciting experiences? How much has knowing your partner made you a better person? In the last month, how often did you feel that your marriage was in a rut? If the answers aren?t exactly what you hoped for, take heart. From a statistical standpoint, your risk for divorce begins to fall once you?ve passed the 10-year mark. According to Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania?s Wharton School, recent Census Bureau data show that only about 4 percent of recently ended marriages involved couples married for 40 years or more. And it?s worth noting that the Gores married in 1970s, the beginning of a generation of couples that has consistently struggled with marriage more than any other group. Dr. Stevenson calls them the “greatest divorcing generation.” Lost in the discussion about the Gore divorce is the inherent optimism that the decision represents. Professor Coontz recalls living next door to a couple in their 70s who disliked each other so much that during the summer, they sat outside in lawn chairs on the opposite sides of the house. “I think it?s good that people can go ahead and start over before they get to that level of anger and hostility,” she said. Dr. Stevenson called the Gore breakup a “glass-half-full story.” “They had 40 years of marriage, and they had what, by many dimensions, should be considered a successful marriage,” she said. “The fact that they both can look forward and see a promising future by not being married — it?s unfortunate that the answer is „yes,? but it?s also somewhat a celebration about how much optimism they have for the rest of their lives.” Tara Parker-Pope writes the Well column for The New York Times and is the author of “For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage,” which was released last month by Dutton.