TOW #24 - A General Theory of Love - IRB pt. 2

I finished the second half of this book, and there were a lot of concepts that the authors addressed that I found to be interesting. It primarily addressed interactions and relationships between people, which is primarily what love is. It focused on where attachments form in the brain, and how the way the brain functions is conducive to learning new things in a particular way, and it's very difficult to "unlearn" something when you become an adult, which the authors described as one of the problems that therapists face. This is because certain neural pathways become strengthened due to being used a lot and this can often lead to faulty assumptions like the illusion of a triangle in this image. 

It described how certain strengthened neural pathways (called Attractors by the authors) can sometimes overwhelm signals from less used pathways. The book described different ways the brain works and what causes some people to be attracted to each other - a common the me is that because they are similar. It explained why changing the way the brain thinks is very difficult, because of the power of the Attractors. The authors used numerous examples of the concepts they were describing, such as the example with the H and the much simpler neural network, and the example with drug abuse and the most effective ways to deal with the problem. The book explains emotions from a largely biological standpoint, which is interesting, because most of the time people don't think of relationships are regulating each other, but the book approaches it much in this way. It explains how people in a truly meaningful relationship make each other better and change each other. The examples made it easier to understand a potentially abstract concept. It explained how the mind is not shaped only by genetics but also by interactions with people and the nurturing a child receives. I thought it was definitely unique and interesting.