Hello, my name is Dessa, and I'm a member of a hip-hop collective called Doomtree. I'm the one in the tank top.
Bok, zovem se Dessa, članica sam hip-hop skupine Doomtree. Ja sam ova u majici bez rukava.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I make my living as a performing, touring rapper and singer. When we perform as a collective, this is what our shows look like. I'm the one in the boots. There's a lot of jumping. There's a lot of sweating. It's loud. It's very high-energy. Sometimes there are unintentional body checks onstage. Sometimes there are completely intentional body checks onstage. It's kind of a hybrid between an intramural hockey game and a concert.
Zarađujem za život putujući i nastupajući kao reperica i pjevačica. Kada nastupamo kao skupina, naši koncerti izgledaju ovako. Ja sam ova u čizmama. Ima puno skakanja, ima puno znojenja. Glasno je, puno je energije. Ponekad dođe do nenamjernih tjelesnih dodira na sceni. Ponekad dođe do sasvim namjernih tjelesnih dodira na sceni. To je nekakav spoj igre hokeja i koncerta.
However, when I perform my own music as a solo artist, I tend to gravitate towards more melancholy sounds. A few years ago, I gave my mom the rough mixes of a new album, and she said, "Baby, it's beautiful, but why is it always so sad?"
Međutim, kada izvodim svoju glazbu solo, težim melankoličnim zvucima. Prije par godina, dala sam majci nedovršen snimak novog albuma i rekla mi je, "Dušo, ovo je predivno, ali zašto je uvijek tako tužno?"
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
"You always make music to bleed out to." And I thought, "Who are you hanging out with that you know that phrase?"
"Uvijek stvaraš glazbu prikladnu da se iskrvari uz nju." Pomislila sam, "S kim se to družiš da bi znala takvu frazu?"
(Laughter) But over the course of my career, I've written so many sad love songs that I got messages like this from fans: "Release new music or a book. I need help with my breakup."
(Smijeh) Ali tijekom svoje karijere napisala sam toliko tužnih ljubavnih pjesama, da sam dobivala ovakve poruke od fanova: "Objavi novu pjesmu ili knjigu. Treba mi pomoć oko prekida."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And after performing and recording and touring those songs for a long time, I found myself in a position in which my professional niche was essentially romantic devastation. What I hadn't been public about, however, was the fact that most of these songs had been written about the same guy. And for two years, we tried to sort ourselves out, and then for five and on and off for 10. And I was not only heartbroken, but I was kind of embarrassed that I couldn't rebound from what other people seemed to recover from so regularly. And even though I knew it wasn't doing either of us any good, I just couldn't figure out how to put the love down.
I nakon što sam jako dugo snimala i putovala izvodeći te pjesme, našla sam se u situaciji da je moje profesionalno područje rada bilo romantično uništenje. Ali ono što nije bilo javno, međutim, jest da je većina tih pjesama bila napisana o istom tipu. Dvije godine pokušavali smo raščistiti našu situaciju, zatim još pet i zatim sljedećih 10 godina. Ne samo da mi je srce bilo slomljeno, nego sam se i sramila što se ne mogu oporaviti od nečega od čega se drugi ljudi toliko uobičajeno oporavljaju. Iako sam znala kako ne činim dobro nijednome od nas, jednostavno nisam mogla odgonetnuti kako da se ostavim ljubavi.
Then, drinking white wine one night, I saw a TED Talk by a woman named Dr. Helen Fisher, and she said that in her work, she'd been able to map the coordinates of love in the human brain. And I thought, well, if I could find my love in my brain, maybe I could get it out.
Onda, pijući bijelo vino jedne večeri, pogledala sam TED govor dr. Helen Fisher, koja je tvrdila da je u svom radu uspjela odrediti koordinate ljubavi u ljudskom mozgu. Pomislila sam, pa ako bih mogla otkriti mjesto ljubavi u svome mozgu, možda bih je mogla izvući.
So I went to Twitter. "Anybody got access to an fMRI lab, like at midnight or something? I'll trade for backstage passes and whiskey."
Pa sam otišla na Twitter. "Ima li tko pristup laboratoriju za magnetsku rezonanciju, recimo oko ponoći? Mijenjam za pristup backstageu i viski."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And that's Dr. Cheryl Olman, who works at the University of Minnesota's Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. She took me up on it. I explained Dr. Fisher's protocol, and we decided to recreate it with a sample size of one, me.
Ovo je dr. Cheryl Olman, koja radi u Centru za magnetsku rezonanciju na Sveučilištu Minnesota. Prihvatila je moj izazov. Objasnila sam joj protokol dr. Fisher i odlučile smo ga ponoviti na uzorku jedne osobe, mene.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So I got decked out in a pair of forest green scrubs, and I was laid on a gurney and wheeled into an fMRI machine. If you're unfamiliar with that technology, essentially, an fMRI machine is a big, tubular magnet that tracks the progress of deoxygenated iron in your blood. So it's essentially figuring out what parts of your brain are making the biggest metabolic demand at any given moment. And in that way, it can figure out which structures are associated with a task, like tapping your finger, for example, will always light up the same region, or in my case, looking at pictures of your ex-boyfriend and then looking at pictures of a dude who just sort of resembled my ex-boyfriend but for whom I had no strong feelings. He was the control.
Pa su me obukli u šumskozelenu halju, polegli na podlogu i poslali u MR uređaj. Ako vam nije poznata ova tehnologija, MR uređaj je veliki valjkasti magnet koji prati protjecanje deoksigeniziranog željeza u vašoj krvi. Zapravo procjenjuje koji dijelovi važeg mozga stvaraju najveće metaboličke zahtjeve u svakom pojedinom trenutku. Tako može odgonetnuti koje strukture su povezane s kojim zadatkom, primjerice, tapkanje prstom će uvijek osvijetliti isto područje, ili u mome slučaju, gledanje fotografija bivšeg dečka, a zatim gledanje fotografija tipa koji liči na mog bivšeg dečka ali za kog nemam snažnih osjećaja. On je bio kontrolna grupa.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And when I left the machine, we had these really high-resolution images of my brain. We could cleave the two halves apart. We could inflate the cortex to see inside all of the wrinkles, essentially, in a view that Dr. Cheryl Olman called the "brain skin rug."
Kada sam izašla iz uređaja, dobili smo ove slike mog mozga u vrlo visokoj rezoluciji. Mogli smo razdvojiti polovice. Mogli smo uvećati moždanu koru i pogledati u svaki nabor, kroz pogled koji dr. Olman naziva "tepihom od moždane kože".
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And we could see how my brain had behaved when I looked at images of both men. And this was important. We could track all of the activity when I looked at the control and when I looked at my ex, and it was in comparing these data sets that we'd be able to find the love alone, in the same way that, if I were to step on a scale fully dressed and then step on it again naked, the difference between those numbers would be the weight of my clothing. So when we did that data comparison, we subtracted one from the other, we found activity in exactly the regions that Dr. Fisher would have predicted.
Mogli smo vidjeti kako se moj mozak ponašao gledajući slike oba muškarca. Ovo je bilo važno. Mogli smo vidjeti svu aktivnost kada sam gledala u kontrolnog tipa i kada sam gledala u svog bivšeg, a uspoređujući ta dva seta podataka pronaći ćemo samu ljubav, na isti način kao kada bih stala na vagu potpuno odjevena i zatim ponovno bez odjeće, razlika u tim brojevima bila bi težina moje odjeće. Kada smo obavili tu usporedbu podataka, oduzeli smo jedne od drugih, pronašli smo aktivnost upravo u području koje je predvidjela dr. Fisher.
That's me. And that's my brain in love. There was activity in that little orange dot, the ventral tegmental area, that kind of loop of red is the anterior cingulate and that golden set of horns is the caudates. After she had had time to analyze the data with her team and a couple of partners, Andrea and Phil, Cheryl sent me an image, a single slide. It was my brain in cross section, with one bright dot of activity that represented my feelings for this dude.
Ovo sam ja. A ovo je moj zaljubljeni mozak. Postojala je aktivnost u toj narančastoj točkici, ventralno-tegmentalnom području, ova crvena zavojnica je prednji cingulum, a ovaj zlatni set rogova je repata jezgra. Nakon što je uzela vremena da analizira podatke sa svojim timom i nekoliko suradnika, Andreom i Philom, Cheryl mi je poslala jednu sliku, presjek. To je bio presjek moga mozga, s jednom točkom aktivnosti koja je predstavljala moje osjećaje za tog tipa.
And I'd known I was in love, and that's the whole reason I was going to these outrageous lengths. But having an image that proved it felt like such a vindication, like, "Yeah, it's all in my head, but now I know exactly where."
Znala sam da sam zaljubljena, to je bio i razlog zašto sam otišla ovoliko daleko. Ali imati sliku kao dokaz za to doimalo se kao oslobođenje. Bilo je, "Da, sve je to u mojoj glavi, ali sada znam točno gdje."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I also felt like an assassin who had her mark. That was what I had to annihilate.
A osjećala sam se i kao ubojica koji vidi svoju metu. To je to što moram uništiti.
So I decided to embark on a course of treatment called "neurofeedback." I worked with a woman named Penijean Gracefire, and she explained that what we'd be doing was training my brain. We're not lobotomizing anything. We're training it in the way that we would train a muscle, so that it would be flexible enough and resilient enough to respond appropriately to my circumstances. So when we're on the treadmill, we would anticipate that our heart would beat and pound, and when we're asleep, we would ask that that muscle slow. Similarly, when I'm in a long-term, viable, loving romantic relationship, the emotional centers of my brain should engage, and when I'm not in a long-term, viable, emotional, loving relationship, they should eventually chill out.
Pa sam odlučila početi sa serijom tretmana zvanih "neurofeedback". Radila sam sa Penijean Gracefire, koja mi je objasnila da ćemo trenirati moj mozak. Nema nikakve lobotomije. Treniramo ga baš kao što bismo trenirali mišić, kako bi bio dovoljno gibljiv i otporan da prikladno odgovori mojim okolnostima. Kada smo na trkaćoj traci, predviđamo da će nam srce snažno lupati, a dok spavamo, zatražit ćemo od tog mišića da uspori. Slično tome, kada sam u dugoročnoj, održivoj, ispunjenoj ljubavnoj vezi, emocionalni centri u mom mozgu bi trebali biti aktivni, a kada nisam u dugoročnoj, održivoj, ispunjenoj ljubavnoj vezi, trebali bi se kad-tad opustiti.
So she came over with a set of electrodes just smaller than a dime that were sensitive enough to detect my brainwaves through my bone and hair and scalp. And when she rigged me up, I could see my brain working in real time. And in another view that she showed me, I could see exactly which parts of my brain were hyperactive, here displayed in red; hypoactive, here displayed in blue; and the healthy threshold of behavior, the green zone, the Goldilocks zone, which is where I wanted to go. And we can, in fact, isolate just those parts of my brain that were associated with the romantic regulation that we'd identified in the Fisher study. So Penijean, several times, hooked me up with all her electrodes, and she explained that I didn't have to do or think anything. I just essentially had to hold pretty still and stay awake and watch.
Došla je k meni sa setom elektroda manjih od novčića koji su bili dovoljno osjetljivi da prepoznaju moje moždane valove kroz moje kosti, kosu i lubanju. Kada me je prikopčala, mogla sam vidjeti rad svog mozga u realnom vremenu. U drugom prizoru koji mi je pokazala, mogla sam vidjeti točno one dijelove mozga koji su bili hiperaktivni, ovdje obojane crveno; hipoaktivni, obojani u plavo; i zdravi prag ponašanja, zeleno područje, Zlatokosino područje, kamo sam željela ići. Zapravo, možemo izdvojiti upravo te dijelove mog mozga koji su povezani s romantičnom regulacijom i koje je otkrila studija dr. Fisher. Pa me je Penijean nekoliko puta spojila na sve te elektrode i objasnila mi je da ne moram ništa činiti niti misliti. Trebala sam samo ostati mirna i budna i gledati.
(Harp and vibraphone sounds play)
(Zvukovi harfe i vibrafona)
So I did. And every time my brain operated in that healthy threshold, I got a little run of harp or vibraphone music. And I just watched my brain rotate at roughly the speed of a gyro machine on my dad's flat-screen TV. And that was counterintuitive. She said the learning would be essentially unconscious. But then I thought about the other things I had learned without actively engaging my conscious mind. When you ride a bike, I don't really know what, like, my left calf muscle is doing, or how my latissimus dorsi knows to engage when I wobble to the right. The body just learns. And similarly, Pavlov's dogs probably don't know a lot about, like, protein structures or the waveform of a ringing bell, but they salivate nonetheless because the body paired the stimuli. Finished the sessions, went back to Dr. Cheryl Olman's fMRI machine, and we repeated the protocol, the same images -- of the ex, of the control and, in the interest of scientific rigor, Cheryl and her team didn't know who was who, so that they couldn't influence the results.
To sam i učinila. Svaki put kada bi moj mozak radio na zdravom pragu, dobila sam kratak zvuk glazbe harfe i vibrafona. I samo sam promatrala svoj mozak kako se rotira brzinom zvrka na televizoru moga oca. To nije vodilo u očekivanom smjeru. Rekla je da će se učenje zapravo odvijati nesvjesno. Ali tada sam razmišljala o drugim stvarima koje sam naučila bez svjesnog korištenja svoje svijesti. Kada vozite bicikl, zapravo nemam pojma što, naprimjer, radi mišić moga lijevog bedra, ili kako moj leđni mišić zna što činiti ako krenem udesno. Tijelo jednostavno nauči. Slično tome, Pavlovljevi psi vjerojatno ne znaju previše o, recimo, proteinskim strukturama ili valovima zvuka zvona, ali ipak otpuštaju slinu jer je tijelo uparilo ta dva podražaja. Završila sam seriju tretmana, vratila sam se u MR uređaj dr. Cheryl Olman, ponovili smo protokol, iste fotografije -- moj bivši, kontrolni tip, a za potrebe znanstvene nepristranosti, Cheryl i njezin tim nisu znali koji je koji, kako ne bi mogli utjecati na ishod.
And after she had time to analyze that second set of data, she sent me that image. She said, "Dude A's dominance of your brain seems to essentially have been eradicated. I think this is the desired result," comma, yes, question mark.
Nakon što je analizirala drugi set podataka, poslala mi je ovu sliku. Rekla je, "Prisutnost tipa A u tvome mozgu izgleda osjetno izbrisanom. Mislim da je to poželjan ishod", zarez, da, upitnik.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And that was the exactly the desired result. And finally, I allowed myself a moment to introspect, like, how did I feel? And in one way, it felt like it was the same inventory of feelings that I'd had at the outset. This isn't "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The dude wasn't a stranger. But I'd had love and jealousy and amity and attraction and respect and all those complicated feelings that you amass after long-term love. But it felt like the benevolent feelings had risen to the surface, and the feelings of fixation and the less-generous feelings weren't quite so present. And that sounds like a small thing in some way, this resequencing of feelings, but to me it felt like the biggest thing. Like, if I told you, "I'm going to anesthetize you, and I'm also going to take out your wisdom teeth," it would really matter to you the sequence in which I did those two things.
To i jest bio upravo željeni ishod. Konačno sam si dozvolila trenutak introspekcije, kako sam se osjećala? S jedne strane, bilo je kao da imam isti raspon osjećaja koje sam imala i ranije. Ovo nije film "Vječni sjaj nepobjedivog uma." Tip nije bio stranac. Ali imala sam ljubav i ljubomoru i prijateljstvo i privlačnost i poštovanje i sve te zamršene osjećaje koje nakupite nakon dugotrajne ljubavi. Ali osjetila sam kao da su dobroćudni osjećaji isplivali na površinu, a osjećaji ovisnosti i manje velikodušni osjećaji više nisu bili prisutni. To nekako zvuči kao mala stvar, to preraspodjeljivanje osjećaja, ali za mene je to bila ogromna stvar. Ako bih vam rekla, "Dat ću ti anesteziju i izvadit ću ti umnjake", stvarno bi vam bio bitan redoslijed tih dviju stvari.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I also felt like I'd had this really unusual philosophical privilege to understand love. The lab offered to 3D-print my caudate. I got to hold love in my hand.
Također sam se osjećala kao da imam tu neobičnu filozofsku povlasticu da razumijem ljubav. Laboratorij mi je ponudio 3D ispis moje repate jezgre. Mogla sam držati ljubav u ruci.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And then I bronzed it, and I made it into a necklace and sold it at the merch table at my shows.
Obavila sam je broncom i pretvorila u ogrlicu koju sam prodala na štandu tijekom koncerata.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
And then, with the help of a couple of friends back in Minneapolis, one of them Becky, we made an enormous disco ball of it --
A zatim, uz pomoć nekoliko prijatelja iz Minneapolisa, jedna od njih je Becky, napravili smo od nje ogromnu disko kuglu
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
that could descend from the ceiling at my big shows.
koja se spuštala sa stropa na mojim većim koncertima.
And I felt like I'd had the opportunity to better understand love, even the compulsive parts. It isn't a neat, symmetrical Valentine's heart. It's bodily, it's systemic, it is a hideous pair of ram's horns buried somewhere deep within your skull, and when that special boy walks by, it lights up, and if he likes you back and you make each other happy, then you fan the flames. And if he doesn't, then you assemble a team of neuroscientists to snuff them out by force.
Osjećala sam da imam priliku bolje razumjeti ljubav, čak i ovisničke dijelove. To nije uredno, simetrično, valentinsko srce. Ona je tjelesna, sustavna, ona je grozomoran par ovčjih rogova utisnutih duboko u vašoj lubanji, i kada taj poseban momak prođe pored vas, upali se, a ako se i vi njemu sviđate i usrećujete jedno drugo, onda se raspiruju plamenovi. A ako mu se ne sviđate, onda skupite tim neuroznanstvenika da ga silom istjerate.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Thanks.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)