NBB Summer Program in Paris

This week I spent most of my time in Hell! As many of you know, I contracted COVID-19 last week and had to quarantine for 5 days. My experience was awful. There is no sugar coating it. The virus drained me both physically and mentally.

Prior to quarantining, we went to the Soccer game which was amazing but I’m pretty sure that that’s the day of first exposure resulting in me contracting Covid.

Fast forward to this past Monday night when I started to feel low energy. I knew that my immune system was on alert but I thought it was just a sinus problem. The next day, however, I started to feel some serious fatigued and was told to get tested. When I got the positive result, I was heartbroken. This was my first time contracting COVID so I didn’t know what to expect.

The physical symptoms were hard but manageable but the mental ones really hit me. During that time, I had felt isolated, depressed, and lonely but also simultaneously stressed about missing all this work. In thinking about this loneliness I searched for any additional information. From what I found I learned that the “lonely areas” in the brain are the amygdala as it is the emotion-center of the brain but also the Nucleus Accumbens which provides a positive reward aspect during social feedback (Lieberz et al. 2021). I also learned the NAcc is less activated during times of loneliness which may contribute to an overall lack of motivation( Lieberz et al. 2021). With no social feedback and the same environmental stimulus, no wonder why I lacked the motivation to do anything. I think it was the loneliness that was preventing me from working

One thing that helped me through all this loneliness was all the people supporting me I’m extremely grateful for my classmates who reached out and checked in on me and sent wishes to get better. These very kind messages did wonders for my immune system as well as my overall hope of getting through this. I’m even more grateful to my roommate Adway for making me soups for the past couple of days and Duke for disinfecting any surface that I touched to ensure that I would spread this horrid virus to anyone else. I’m also really grateful for my Mom and partner who were rooting for me through this dark time. Also, shout out to the two Squishamallows that my partner packed for me. These guys are the real pillars of my mental health!!

Lieberz, J., Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., Saporta, N., Kanterman, A., Gorni, J., Esser, T., Kuskova, E., Schultz, J., Hurlemann, R., & Scheele, D. (2021). Behavioral and neural dissociation of social anxiety and loneliness. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.25.21262544 

by Samantha Feingold

“Does anyone know what Rugby actually is?” This question floated around in several variations the week before we were to attend a France vs. Denmark rugby match.

“What?” asked our waiter several times before it was evident we weren’t pronouncing it well enough for him to understand. Lauren gestured throwing a rugby and he finally understood, but said he didn’t know the sport well enough to explain. While the restaurant is nearby our apartment and we have eaten there enough times for this waiter to recognize us when we walk past, an Italian restaurant maybe wasn’t the best place to ask about rugby.

“It’s like football but without helmets,” said a peer. It is important I emphasize at this time she was referring to American football. This statement left me more confused as helmets and padding seem to be the most important part of football, a high contact sport. Research on retired football players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) has amplified in conjunction with the increase of media coverage on cases of severe cognitive deterioration and changes in mood in famous players (Buckland et al., 2019). However, there are minimal studies on CTE and long-term negative effects on the brain for rugby players (Buckland et al., 2019).

Prior to the match, my peers presented a crash-course on rugby and an in-depth journal article review on rugby and CTE (Zimmerman et al., 2021). It quickly became evident that rugby is quite intense, and it was likely there would be many head collisions.

When we finally arrived at Stade de France, all the fans were bouncing with excitement and kids ran around with French-flag face paint. It wasn’t until we settled in our seats and the pre-match rituals concluded that we realized the peculiar goals and that what in front of us resembled European football far more than having any parallels to American football (Figure 1).

While we did not see rugby that evening, we were lucky enough to watch a qualifying match for the World Cup (Figure 2)! Within minutes of realizing this was soccer and not rugby, it became evident that instead of being tackled, there was risk for brain injury from repeatedly heading the soccer ball. The potential force exerted from heading ranges from 500-1200 Newtons (Teymouri et al., 2012) and is equivalent to a maximum of over 250 pounds-force (lbf). While this is not quite the impact of a moving 300+ pound American football player, the European football players are (like the elite rugby players) not wearing helmets. Thus, while soccer is very entertaining, it is important to properly teach young players how to head a soccer ball and be aware of the possible injury.

 

Works Cited

Buckland, M.E., Sy, J., Szentmariay, I. (2019). Chronic traumatic encephalopathy in two former Australian National Rugby League players. acta neuropathol commun 7, 97. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40478-019-0751-1

Teymouri, M., Sadeghi, H., Nabaei, A., & Kasaeian, A. (2012). The relationship between
biomechanical-anthropometrical parameters and the force exerted on the head when
heading free kicks in soccer. Archives of trauma research, 1(1), 44–48. https://doi.org/10.5812/atr.5307

Zimmerman, K. A., Laverse, E., Samra, R., Yanez Lopez, M., Jolly, A. E., Bourke, N. J.,
Graham, N., Patel, M. C., Hardy, J., Kemp, S., Morris, H. R., & Sharp, D. J. (2021).
White matter abnormalities in active elite adult rugby players. Brain
communications, 3(3), fcab133. https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcab133

On June 11^th, 2022, Sam, Rachel, Cynthia, and I visited Reims, France with Aman, one of my friends from Emory. During our visit, we saw the Notre-Dame Cathedral of Reims, which translates to “Our Lady of Reims.” This beautiful Roman Catholic cathedral, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was the traditional location for the coronation of the kings of France. The cathedral was founded in the 5^th century and has gone through numerous restorations throughout the past few centuries, including after being damaged in the French Revolution and in World War I, when it was struck by more than three hundred artillery shells. I was not only awed by beautiful building but also the deep-rooted history of Christianity in France. Christianity is as much embedded France’s history as it is ingrained in the culture and everyday lives of French citizens. For example, I found it interesting to learn that the grocery store near our apartment does not sell alcohol on Sundays.

While visiting the cathedral, I reflected on the articles we discussed in NBB 402W about COVID-19, which sparked my interest in learning about the connection between religion and the pandemic since religious services quickly became hotspots for the virus. I wondered whether the illness made people feel more connected to their religious practices, so I did some research regarding the pandemic and religion. One Polish study found that most citizens surveyed declared faith/spiritually was important to them, but their faith did not strengthen in the face of the pandemic. They found that a higher percentage of Catholic respondents believed in the protective power of faith compared to other denominations and more Catholic respondents also declared that faith had a crucial role in their life (Kowalczyk et al., 2020). Despite this study showing that the pandemic did not increase spiritual belief, religion is obviously an important part of the European lifestyle. Studies have shown neurobiological changes correlated with religion and spirituality specifically in medial frontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, default mode network, and caudate (Rim et al., 2019), which could explain the importance of religion in people’s lives.

Although the outcomes of the pandemic study were not what I was expecting, I found it interesting to learn more about Christianity and Catholicism in Europe, as well as the brain changes association with religion. Overall, this visit allowed me to feel more connected to my late grandparents on my dad’s side, who were raised Catholic.

Citations:

Kowalczyk O, Roszkowski K, Montane X, Pawliszak W, Tylkowski B, Bajek A. Religion and Faith Perception in a Pandemic of COVID-19. J Relig Health. 2020;59(6):2671-2677. doi:10.1007/s10943-020-01088-3

Rim, J. I., Ojeda, J. C., Svob, C., Kayser, J., Drews, E., Kim, Y., Tenke, C. E., Skipper, J., & Weissman, M. M. (2019). Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates. Harvard review of psychiatry, 27(5), 303–316. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000232

On Wednesday, June 1^st, a group of students took advantage of having no major assignments due the next day and spent the evening at the Eiffel Tower. All walking towards the tower from different directions due to the locations of our various metro stops, we met under the center of the tower which we quickly learned was not the ideal location. We relocated to the lawn where we found an open area of grass to have our picnic. I enjoyed my caramel crepe while others were feasting on bread and cheese. Little did we know that we had the best photographer among us (Jacob) who gave us a little spontaneous photoshoot gifting us the ability to remember all the fun we had that night.

On our first day in Paris we did a boat tour as a class and when we passed the Eiffel tower our guide shared some interesting history about it. The tower’s construction was complete in 1889 in time for the World’s Fair and was not meant to be a permanent structure. When it was first built, Parisians were quite critical of the tower claiming that it was an eyesore and did not fit in with the city. However, despite this opinion of the locals, the Eiffel Tower has become one of the most famous landmarks and is the staple of the city.

This got me thinking about the neuroscience behind the perception of beauty. In previous classes, I have learned about perception of beauty in faces/people and the brain regions involved in that but did not know much about how this applied to objects such as buildings or art. In searching the literature, I was introduced to the field of neuroaesthetics (Iigaya et al., 2020). Neuroaesthetics explores the neural basis for judging art, of which architecture and monuments fall under. Early studies found that the brain regions involved in viewing pleasant aesthetics were also involved in reward pathways. This suggests that looking at an aesthetically pleasing work of art elicits a similar response to other rewarding stimuli. They also explained that assigning aesthetic value is done by breaking a stimulus down into elementary features to be processed. This is a concept I am familiar with from NBB 301 when we discussed sensory processing.

In my very unprofessional opinion, I thought the Eiffel Tower was pretty when it was lit up, but during the day it was more exciting due to its significance rather than its beauty.

Reference:

Iigaya, K., O’Doherty, J. P., & Starr, G. G. (2020). Progress and Promise in Neuroaesthetics. Neuron, 108(4), 594–596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2020.10.022