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.
哈囉,我是黛莎, 我是嘻哈團體 Doomtree 的一員。 我是穿背心的那位。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我是說唱歌手, 靠表演及巡迴演出為生。 當我們全體一起演出時, 我們的表演是像這樣子的。 我是穿靴子的那位。 有很多的跳躍,有很多的汗水。 我們的演出是很喧噪、很高耗能的。 有時,在台上會有 非刻意的身體碰撞。 有時,在台上會有 完全刻意的身體碰撞。 它就像是校內曲棍球比賽 和音樂會的混合。
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?"
然而,當我獨自一人 表演自己的音樂時, 我會傾向較憂傷的音樂風格。 幾年前,我拿一張初步混音版的 新專輯給我媽聽, 她說:「寶貝,它很美, 但為什麼總是那麼悲傷?」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
"You always make music to bleed out to." And I thought, "Who are you hanging out with that you know that phrase?"
「你的音樂總是讓人們的心淌血。」 我心想:「你都和誰混在一起 才會學到這種說法啊?」
(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."
(笑聲) 但,在我職涯中, 我寫過好多悲傷的愛情歌曲, 以至於有歌迷這樣跟我說: 「請推出新的音樂或書籍。 我剛分手需要協助。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
在長時間演出、錄製、 巡迴表演那些歌曲之後, 我發現我的處境是, 我最擅長的就是破壞浪漫。 然而,我沒有公開說過, 這些歌曲大部分是為了 同一個傢伙而寫的。 兩年的時間,我們試著 理清我們的狀況, 接著再五年的時間, 然後又藕斷絲連的十年。 我不只是心碎, 我也覺得有點尷尬,因為我 無法從這個狀態中恢復, 明明其他人似乎都可以做到。 即使我知道那對我們 兩個人都沒好處, 我就是沒辦法把愛放下來。
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.
接著,在喝著白酒的夜晚, 我看了一場 TED 演說, 講者是海倫 ‧ 費雪博士, 她說在她的研究中, 她可以標記出愛在人腦中的座標。 我心想,如果我能找到 我腦中的愛在哪裡, 也許我就能把它弄出來。 所以我上了推特。
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."
「誰能把我弄進功能性磁振造影 實驗室?在半夜之類的? 我可以用後台通行證 和威士忌來交換。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
那是雪蘿 ‧ 歐曼博士, 她在明尼蘇達大學的 磁振研究中心工作。 她接受了我的提案。 我解釋了費雪博士的實驗計畫, 我們決定要重現它, 樣本大小:一人,我。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我換上綠色的醫療服, 我躺在輪床上, 被推入功能性磁振造影機。 如果你對這項技術不熟悉,基本上, 功能性磁振造影機 是一個很大的管狀磁鐵, 能追蹤你血液中缺氧鐵的移動。 所以,基本上它就是 找出你大腦中的哪個部分, 在任何的特定時刻, 有著最大的新陳代謝需求。 用那種方式,它就可以找出 何種結構和何種任務有關, 比如彈手指這種任務, 總會讓腦部的同一個區域亮起來, 或者,在我的例子中, 任務就是看著前男友的照片, 接著,再看一個像前男友的人的照片, 但我對這個人沒有強烈的感覺。 他是對照組。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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."
我離開機器之後, 我們得到了我大腦的高解析度影像。 我們能把它切開成兩部分。 我們能擴大皮質部分, 看到皺摺的內部, 這種視角被雪蘿 ‧ 歐曼博士 稱為「大腦皮地毯」。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我們可以看見,當我看著 兩個不同人的影像時, 我的大腦有什麼反應。 這很重要。 我們能追蹤當我看著對照組 及看著前男友時的所有腦部活動, 比較這些資料集, 讓我們可以單獨把愛找出來, 這個方法就類似, 如果我穿著衣服站上磅秤, 接著再赤裸地站上去, 兩次測量的差值 就是我衣服的重量。 所以,我們比較資料之後, 我們把兩者相減, 我們發現腦部的活動正落在 費雪博士預測的那個區域。
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.
那是我。 那是我在戀愛時的大腦。 在那橘色小點上有發現活動, 那是腹側被蓋區, 那個紅色的環形就是前扣帶回, 那對金牛角就是尾狀核。 在雪蘿有時間和她的團隊 以及兩位合作夥伴, 安卓亞和菲爾,一起分析資料後, 雪蘿寄了一張影像給我, 只有一張投影片。 圖中是我的大腦橫斷面, 那一個亮點代表有活動, 也就是我對這個傢伙的感覺。
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."
我知道我在戀愛中, 那就是我有這麼多離譜行徑的原因。 但有影像來證實這一點, 感覺就像我被證明無辜, 像是:「是啊,都是我的腦袋瓜 在作祟,但現在我知道它在哪裡了。」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And I also felt like an assassin who had her mark. That was what I had to annihilate.
我也覺得自己像是有了目標的刺客。 那就是我得要去摧毀的。
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.
所以我決定開始進行治療, 這方式叫做「神經回饋」。 和我合作的是一名叫做 潘妮珍 ‧ 葛雷斯佛爾的女子, 她解釋說我們要做的是訓練我的大腦。 我們並沒有要切開什麼。 我們訓練大腦的方式 和訓練肌肉的方式一樣, 讓大腦有足夠的彈性和恢復力, 可以對我的狀況做出適當的反應。 所以在跑步機上時,我們會預期 我們的心跳會很快很明顯, 睡眠時,我們需要那肌肉慢下來。 同樣的,當我身處在一段長期、 可行、有愛的愛情關係中時, 我大腦的情緒中心應該要啟動, 當我不處在長期、可行、 有愛的愛情關係中時, 情緒中心最終應該要冷靜下來。
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.
所以,她拿來了比一角硬幣 小一點點的電極, 它們靈敏到可以穿透我的骨頭、 頭髮、頭皮來偵測我的腦波。 當她幫我裝配好之後, 我就能即時看見大腦的運作。 她還給我看了另一個視角, 我能看見我的大腦有哪些部分 超級活躍,用紅色表示; 活動減退是用藍色表示; 而行為的健康門檻值, 是綠色區域,適居帶, 就是我想要達成的目標。 事實上,我們可以把 我大腦的這些部分隔離出來, 也就是和浪漫調節相關的部分, 在費雪的研究中找出來的部分。 所以, 潘妮珍 好幾次 把我接上她的電極, 她解釋說,我不用 做什麼或想什麼。 基本上,我只要保持不動, 別睡著, 然後看就好了。
(Harp and vibraphone sounds play)
(播放豎琴和電顫琴的聲音)
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.
我就照做了。 每當我的大腦在那健康的 門檻範圍之內運作時, 我就會聽到一小段 豎琴或電顫琴的音樂。 我就這樣看著我的大腦轉動, 轉速和我爸的平面 電視上的陀螺儀差不多。 那是違背直覺的。 她說,基本上學習是無意識的。 但我接著就去思考 我沒有刻意用意識大腦 就學會的其他事物。 當你騎腳踏車時, 我不會知道左小腿肌在做什麼, 也不會知道當我向右晃動時 我的背闊肌會做什麼。 身體就是會學習。 同樣的,巴甫洛夫的狗 (古典制約實驗)不會知道很多 蛋白質結構或者鈴聲的波形, 但牠們就是會分泌唾液,因為 身體對那刺激物有對應的反應。 完成了這部分之後, 回到雪蘿博‧歐曼博士的 功能性磁振造影機中, 我們再一次執行實驗計畫, 用同樣的影像—— 有前男友、有對照組, 另外,為了科學精確的緣故, 雪蘿和她的團隊當時並不知道 誰是誰,才不會影響到結果。
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.
在她找時間分析了第二組資料後, 她傳給我這張影像。 她說: 「A 男對你的大腦的主宰力 似乎已經被根絕。 我想這是我們希望的結果,是嗎?」
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
那的確是希望的結果。 終於,我找了個時間來反思, 比如,我感覺如何? 某方面,感覺就像 和我一開始時列出的感覺都一樣。 這並不是《王牌冤家》(電影)。 這個傢伙不是陌生人。 我先前有愛、嫉妒、 友善、吸引、尊重, 以及經過長時間戀愛 所累積出來的各種複雜感受。 但,感覺就像是 和善的感受浮上表面了, 而異常依戀和較不寬容的感覺 沒有這麼顯著了。 某種程度上,將感受重新排序 聽起來沒什麼大不了, 但,對我來說這感覺像是件大事。 就像,如果我告訴你: 「我要將你麻醉, 和我要把你的智齒拔掉,」 這兩件事的順序就真的很重要。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
我也覺得, 我擁有這種很不尋常的哲學特權, 可以去了解愛。 實驗室說他們可以 立體列印出我的尾狀核。 我可以把我的愛握在手中。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And then I bronzed it, and I made it into a necklace and sold it at the merch table at my shows.
接著,我把它鍍銅,製成項鍊, 在我表演場地的 商品販售桌上將它賣掉。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
(Applause)
(掌聲)
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 --
接著,在明尼亞波里斯的 幾位朋友協助下, 其中一位是貝琪, 我們還做了它的迪斯可舞廳版本——
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
that could descend from the ceiling at my big shows.
在我的大型演出中,它可以從天而降。
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.
我覺得,我有機會能夠更了解愛, 甚至是強迫性的部分。 它並不是一個工整對稱的情人愛心。 它是身體的、它是系統性的、 它是一對醜陋的公羊角, 深深埋在你的頭骨裡面, 當那位特殊的男孩經過時, 它就會亮起來, 如果他也喜歡你, 你們就會讓彼此快樂, 接著情緒被煽動。 如果他不喜歡你, 你就會組成神經科學家團隊 用力消滅它們。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Thanks.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)