Author: Oscar Gao

Posted on

The Eiffel Tower and More

This is my last blog post, as the trip has come to an end. I want to write about my visit to the popular tourist destinations, including the Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the basilica, the Louvre, and the Eiffel tower.

I was amazed by Paris because it was so different from any other cities that I have lived in. I tend to make decisions that will take me to a novel environment, such as the decision of studying abroad in the U.S. for college and studying abroad in Paris during the summer. This kind of decision-making (novelty seeking) is suggested to be supported by the neurotransmitter dopamine in my brain (Costa, Tran, Turchi, & Averbeck, 2014). After review literature about dopamine’s functions, I now feel more comfortable about the topic. To everyone in the program, I am thankful for the dopamine in your brain: it helped you make the decision of going on this trip; Otherwise, we would not have met.

I remember that while I was riding a cab to my apartment, I looked out the window, and the Notre Dame was right there. It made me realize how close I will get to some of the most iconic sites in the world.

The Arc of Triomphe, the Basilica, and the Louvre were full of tourists. Building a major traffic circle at the Arc of Triomphe is probably not the best idea, and the traffic there is bad. I was scammed at the Basilica, but I only gave the scammers 20 cents when they asked for 20 euros. The view of the city at the top was fantastic and almost made me forget about the scam. I am not an art person, so I just took selfies with famous artworks in the Louvre and left.

The Arc of Triomphe

Finally, I love the Eiffel tower. I can see it every day when I walk to class and when I shop for grocery. It serves as a constant reminder that I am in Paris. After a while, I kind of get used to it, but every time I look up and see the tower afar, I take a deep breath and tell myself: You are in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world. Classes can be stressful and overwhelming, but I appreciate the opportunity of spending five weeks living and studying in Paris. For many people, this may be their dream. Enjoy your life, because we are living the dream.

The Eiffel Tower

Reference

Costa, V. D., Tran, V. L., Turchi, J., & Averbeck, B. B. (2014). Dopamine Modulates Novelty Seeking Behavior During Decision Making. Behavioral Neuroscience, 128(5), 556–566.http://doi.org.proxy.library.emory.edu/10.1037/a0037128

Posted on

The Loire Valley

We spent a day in the Loire Valley and visited two castles: Château d’Amboise and Château de Chenonceau. Dr. Easterling was wrong: Versailles is not the most beautiful place in the world, the Loire Valley is (Keith Easterling, personal communication, June 1, 2018).

The Château d’Amboise is a grand castle and an example of Gothic and Renaissance architecture. I would not expect to find a similar castle in the U.S. because the U.S. has never had a king to build a royal château. We had a very cool tour guide inside the royal mansion. She explained to us the history of France in an approachable manner.

Then I went to see Leonardo de Vinci, who is allegedly resting in the chapel of the château. I thought he was a pure Italian printer, but in reality he spent his final years in Amboise with his best friend, the king, François I. François I was not by Leonardo de Vinci’s side when he died, even though there is a painting of François I holding de Vinci’s hand at his last moment. It was only propaganda to make the royal family more likable (the people like Leonard de Vinci). As the tour guide instructed us, we have to be able to identify the “fake news.”

Later we went to Château de Chenonceau, which was built on a river. The château is not as big as the Château d’Amboise, but the fact that it spans the Cher river (a tributary of the Loire river) makes it magnificent in its own way.

At Château de Chenonceau, we met a children choir group that performed in the château. Their voice is just as beautiful as the rest of the château. There are a considerable amount of beautiful tapestries in the display. I am going to get a tapestry. I will probably never live in château, but at least I can make my wall looks like a wall in the château.

One other perk of living in the Château de Chenonceau is that you can enjoy the soothing sound of the flowing Cher river. Soothing sounds, such as natural white noise including the sound of raining and water flowing, have benefits. For example, Farokhnezhad Afshar, Bahramnezhad, Asgari, and Shiri (2016) found that white noise is useful in “masking environmental noises, improving sleep, and maintaining sleep in the coronary care unit.” Rausch, Bauch, and Bunzeck (2013) found that white noise has a beneficial effect on learning that depends on dopaminergic neuromodulation.

Reference

Farokhnezhad Afshar, P., Bahramnezhad, F., Asgari, P., & Shiri, M. (2016). Effect of White Noise on Sleep in Patients Admitted to a Coronary Care. Journal of Caring Sciences, 5(2), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.15171/jcs.2016.011

Rausch, V. H., Bauch, E. M., & Bunzeck, N. (2013). White Noise Improves Learning by Modulating Activity in Dopaminergic Midbrain Regions and Right Superior Temporal Sulcus. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(7), 1469–1480. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00537

Posted on

Chocolate Workshop

We visited a chocolate museum/workshop on Monday. The museum displays the history of cocoa consumption, the techniques of making chocolate and things that are made of chocolate but seem like they are made of other materials. There is free chocolate everywhere in the museum. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a disproportionally large stomach, and therefore I always appreciated places where I can eat as much food as I want. I paced myself, however, because I knew there would be more coming once we were in the workshop.

Cocoa beans, which are the raw material for chocolate, are not cultivated in France: they are mainly produced in tropical African, Asian and American countries. So French is not that unique in respect to chocolate: everyone’s chocolate is made of beans from countries such as Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia and Nigeria (Mattyasovszky, 2017). The French, however, create pieces of chocolate so pretty that they are worth building a museum for. I remember that my dad once brought me a box of chocolate from France years ago, and I could not eat it because it was so pretty. So I just kept them until they had gone bad. I would not expect to see a similar place in the US because people do not care too much about how their chocolate looks.

We went to the workshop after the museum. The chocolate expert made the process look easy, but it was not. We had to dump the warmed up liquid chocolate into the mold quickly before it cooled down and hardened. We had to hit the mold on the side with the spatula, and the melted chocolate just fell everywhere: on the table, on our hands, and on our cloth. I ate all the chocolate that landed on my hands. Then we added hazelnut filling and another layer of chocolate before putting it in the fridge to cool. The end result was not ideal, as half of my chocolate pieces were broken. But I took a lot of chocolate scratched from the table, so I was happy.

I Made Chocolate!

Do you know that one study has shown that eating cocoa flavanol (a component of chocolate) regularly might improve cognitive function in elderly people who have mild cognitive impairment (Desideri et al., 2012)? More studies found evidence of the potential cognitive benefit of chronic intake of cocoa flavanol (Socci et al., 2017). So I hope my brain will become healthier as I eat all the chocolate scratched from the table.

Chocolate Scratched From the Table

 

Reference

Desideri, Giovambattista, Kwik-Uribe, Catherine, Grassi, Davide, Necozione, Stefano, Ghiadoni, Lorenzo, Mastroiacovo, Daniela, . . . Ferri, Claudio. (2012). Benefits in cognitive function, blood pressure, and insulin resistance through cocoa flavanol consumption in elderly subjects with mild cognitive impairment: The Cocoa, Cognition, and Aging (CoCoA) study. Hypertension., 60(3), 794-801.

Mattyasovszky, M. (2015, April 23). Top 10 Cocoa Producing Countries. Retrieved from https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/top-10-cocoa-producing-countries.html

Socci, V., Tempesta, D., Desideri, G., De Gennaro, L., & Ferrara, M. (2017). Enhancing Human Cognition with Cocoa Flavonoids. Frontiers in Nutrition., 4, 19.

Posted on

Château de Versailles

Last Saturday, I visited Château de Versailles. It is supposed to be the most beautiful place in the whole world (Keith Easterling, personal communication, June 1, 2018).

At first, I certainly did not think that it was the most beautiful place, and it was not exactly what I expected. I did not look up photos of Versailles before visiting, so I had an unrealistic expectation. I have always had this picture in my head of what a royal palace should look like. I anticipated that, after I got off the train, I will spot a gold mansion across the meadow, under the sun, shining. But when I arrived at Versailles, it was cloudy, and the palace did not look very big to me at first sight.

The gate under the cloudy sky

Continue reading “Château de Versailles”

Posted on

Cheese Tasting

I don’t usually eat cheese because I have lactose intolerance, just as 99% of other East Asians (Alharbi & El-Sohemy, 2017). To prepare for the cheese tasting on Wednesday, I took four dairy relieve pills filled with lactase enzyme. 

There are thousands of kinds of cheese in Paris. They say if you try one type of cheese per day during your stay in Paris, you will have to stay for years before tasting every type of cheese (A. Fropos, personal communication, May 24, 2018). The cheese tasting place that we went to, le cheese geek, has over 150 types of cheese. We tasted six of them.

From bottom to top: Saint-manure de Touraine, Saint-nectaire, Camembert de Normandie, Cornté, Munster, and Roquefort

As our guide taught us, there are multiple steps one should follow when tasting a piece of cheese. My steps of eating cheese are: Step one, grab the cheese; Step two, put it in my mouth; Step three, grab more. But this method is for cheese that I bought from the supermarket. At the cheese tasting place, everything was more sophisticated. The first step should be to look at and appreciate the structure and the texture of the cheese. The second step is to smell it. Then one should always eat the cheese with some juice that goes with it. Take it slow while enjoying the flavor.

I had a blast at the tasting, eating a lot of cheese. I have a disproportionally large stomach relative to my size, so I always appreciate places where I am allowed to eat as much food as I can.

This visit, however, was more than simply to test how much cheese I can eat. It was also a chance to recognized this cheese-eating culture in France. To some French people, cheese is not just food. It is art. I do not expect to find a similar place in the US because I doubt if most Americans can name more than four kinds of cheese.

Moreover, some studies suggested that this trip might have potentially decreased my dementia risk. One paper indicates that the compound dehydroergosterol in camembert cheese can reduce microglia inflammation and thus have a neuronal protective effect in vitro. (Ano et al., 2015a). Another study found an in vivo effect of camembert cheese extract suppressing the accumulation of Aβ, which is known to be a critical Alzheimer’s pathology (Ano et al., 2015b). It is still uncertain if we can prevent dementia by eating cheese. But if we can, I will surely prefer to reduce my risk by eating French, not American, cheese. 

 

Reference

Alharbi, O., & El-Sohemy, A. (2017). Lactose Intolerance ( LCT -13910CT) Genotype Is Associated with Plasma 25-Hydroxyvitamin D Concentrations in Caucasians: A Mendelian Randomization Study. The Journal of Nutrition, 147(6), 1063-1069. doi:10.3945/jn.116.246108

Ano, Y., Kutsukake, T., Hoshi, A., Yoshida, A., & Nakayama, H. (2015). Identification of a Novel Dehydroergosterol Enhancing Microglial Anti-Inflammatory Activity in a Dairy Product Fermented with Penicillium candidum. Plos One, 10(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0116598

Ano, Y., Ozawa, M., Kutsukake, T., Sugiyama, S., Uchida, K., Yoshida, A., & Nakayama, H. (2015). Preventive Effects of a Fermented Dairy Product against Alzheimer’s Disease and Identification of a Novel Oleamide with Enhanced Microglial Phagocytosis and Anti-Inflammatory Activity. Plos One,10(3). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118512

Kim, B., Hong, V. M., Yang, J., Hyun, H., Im, J. J., Hwang, J., Yoon, S., Kim, J. E. (2016). A Review of Fermented Foods with Beneficial Effects on Brain and Cognitive Function. Preventive Nutrition and Food Science, 21(4), 297-309. doi:10.3746/pnf.2016.21.4.297