The Neurology of the Soul

Below, Edward Einhorn answers the second of our three questions.

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I have long wanted to work on a project I have called The Neurology of the Soul. I have conceived of it as a theater piece, as I do a lot of theater about neurology, but I think conceptually it is an exploration that could happen across many mediums. I am fascinated with the research on the neurology of love, the brain activity of attraction. How do the neurological processes mesh with the poetics of love that humankind has written about over the millennia? And how do those expressions of feeling feed back into the neurological process? Is writing about love akin to experiencing it? Does seeing it on stage or on screen key-off the same parts of the brain? If so, what are the triggers--do certain words whisper love a little more insistently? Does poetically structured verse work differently than unstructured prose? What can we learn about the feelings we have romanticized, in scientific terms, and what does the way one expresses oneself in words or images say about the way one's brain is structured?

In one play I've already executed, Strangers, a man with Korsakov's syndrome (a form of amnesia) meets his wife multiple times, each like the first, with the same surge of attraction when he sees her. Could that be codified as well, or seen in a brain scan? Perhaps there will be a future dating service where two people can sit in the same room together, look at each other, and have a neurologist say, "I see from these brain scans your love will be true and undying." Or maybe, "the two of you are close, but not quite there. Read this love poem to her, it's calibrated for maximal efficiency. That should do the trick."