As social creatures who long for strong ties to family and friends, human beings form bonds that can become the most rewarding part of their lives. But having strong relationships also means the possibility of experiencing a loss. Grief is one of the most difficult processes people face in life. Those who have lost a loved one know the feeling of overwhelming sadness and anguish that seems to spring from the depths of the body.
The way to understand why grief feels that way requires resorting to the place of emotions: the brain. Mary-Frances O'Connor is an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, where she leads the grief, loss and social stress lab. There he investigates the effects of grief on the brain and body. It is the only laboratory of this specialty in the United States and is a worldwide benchmark for this discipline.
His book The Mourning Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn About Love and Loss, proposes a neuroscientific analysis of how people adapt to life after loss. “When my mother died,” she told in an exclusive dialogue with Infobae that took place over Zoom, “she was not yet an expert in grief. Someone had recommended that I go see a counselor and I said, in the first session: 'Well, she died. What else can you say? 'However, 20 years later I have written a whole book. '
On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic added a distinctive factor to grief: social distancing. This prevented the normal accompaniment of the process of death, making the acceptance of the loss of a loved one more complex. That is why, said the specialist, this stage “strictly” imposed a different duel.
—You suggest that pain and grief define two distinct sensations, could you explain those differences to me?
— Grief is that wave that just knocks you down, it's the feeling that changes over time without ever disappearing. It's the natural response to loss. If I open a drawer and meet my mother's signature, 20 years after her death, I may still fall apart in tears. But that pain is not the same as it was 20 years ago. Even though pain is not pleasant, if we hope we will never feel it again, we may begin to wonder if we are actually improving or if we are adapting the way we are expected to.
“If we all grow up knowing that we are going to die, why does everything look so difficult when that moment comes up?
—Death is a by-product of love. When we bond with another person, the brain codifies the belief that they will always be there and we will be there for them. That is why the eventual daily separations do not jeopardize the continuity of the bond. But in cases where a loved one dies, the brain contrasts the fact of receiving the news against the habitual presence, those two flows of information conflict for a long time. That's what makes people think that whoever died is going to appear at any moment.
What then happens in the brain?
“They clearly know that this expectation is irrational, although it is real for them. Beyond personal religious issues, from neuroscience we consider the brain to be a prediction machine. It is there to predict what is about to happen so that one can prepare for it. Because of this, we are always living in two worlds at the same time: the predicted time of our brain and the real one, which, in some circumstances, do not coincide.
—You did the first brain scan visualization of people in grief, what surprised you in that investigation?
—In principle, people need to talk and they do it quite naturally. It is common to everyone that if they are going to tell something about the love of their life, they show you pictures. So in our research we scanned photos that people brought us and took words from the stories they told us about their loss, and projected them onto the glasses they used in the scanner. So, literally, we had images of what their brains reacted to when everyone looked at individual photos of their lost loved one, which was a bit usual at the time. Usually, we would try to have standardized stimuli for everyone. But it's such a personal experience that it felt important. One of the things we realized is that grief involves a lot of different things that the brain is processing at the same time. That includes some things that might be expected, such as memories or being able to take someone else's perspective. But others that involve a kind of coding of the self and the other, even how to regulate the heart rate.
—Grief is difficult to rationalize
“Very difficult. In many ways, the places where humans stumble is where the brain has biases or conflicting information, so we make up the best story we can to make sense of it. Grief is a situation in which we are exactly in this position, only it is so universal that we don't think of it that way. The brain is very complex. And we may actually be using two streams of information at the same time. One aspect of memory is reviewing the moments we spend with the loved one, while another aspect transits the reality of his or her absence. At the same time we have to think about the link. The human brain creates a bond when a subject becomes a parent or spouse. That bond is very strong and comes along with some beliefs. One of them is the one we mentioned before the brain thinks it will always exist. When that bond is broken, the two flows of information appear. On the one hand, the brain knows it's gone. But on the other hand, he thinks he's coming to dinner. That can be very confusing for people. It takes a lot of time for the brain to be able to correct and recalculate all the emotions that mean.
— So do brain cells have to make a physical change to adapt to the post-grief scenario?
“It is interesting to analyze a simple experiment: if a mouse is placed every day in a space with a Lego piece and the experience is repeated for several days, when the piece is removed and introduced into the site, it retains as a sort of a ghost trace of that block. He's waiting for you. Some of your neurons are automatically activated where the block should be. That persists for several days. Translating this to the closeness of a person who loves each other, who is in our lives, with whom we do, think and plan a life, all of that challenges the brain that literally has to create a new wiring to understand what is happening.
— What happens to children's brains in these situations?
“They grieve like adults. It is important for their brains to incorporate experiences and learning. Adults should be concerned that they acquire a vision of life that incorporates death. Finding a dead bird in the square can help open questions that will trace synapses in children's brains. They will have more tools to deal with duels when it comes to them. What does this inert bird mean on the ground? What do we feel when we see him? What rituals does our family have when someone dies? The stories of what the people who came before us did give us clues to some possible paths.
—In one of his investigations, he assures that people with spirituality respond better to grief. Have you identified scientific reasons to support that claim?
“I think the secret is beyond spirituality in itself. It is rather placed in what spiritual being involves. For example: we know that a religious person lives his faith in community. So, we know scientifically that those who are accompanied go through the mourning more agile way.
— Has the way we deal with grief changed since the pandemic?
“Strictly yes. There's been a lot of discussion about grief. But what we do know is that for every person who has died, there are about nine loved ones left, who are survivors. So, we are approaching 9 million people who are in acute grief in the United States alone. Having so many people going through that simultaneously is very complex. Usually, when we lose a loved one, we have others around us who aren't going through that experience that we can lean on. We now have a rather unusual situation where we are dealing with many kinds of pain, but even if we focus only on grief, we are dealing with many deaths. As a grief researcher, my interest is partly focused on why the circumstances of the pandemic could be more difficult for people who are grieving The brain is based on information flow. In normal situations we can accompany the processes of death, even in a sudden accident there is a ceremony, a meeting of relatives. All this collaborates with brain synapses to bring us closer to reality, but in the pandemic many of those circumstances have changed due to social distancing.
“You're processing data from this experience right now, aren't you?
“Yes, that's what I'm investigating at the moment. I have a series of very moving encounters. A 70-year-old woman who left her husband quite healthy in the emergency room, who had a cough and some trouble breathing, and then, because she was not allowed to be in the hospital, the next thing she knew was that she had died. That is a very unusual circumstance. The problem is that it doesn't give our brain the opportunity to understand what is happening as we go through the experience.
- Are we going through a kind of collective duel?
“It's such a universal experience. I think it's unusual in a cultural sense. We sometimes forget that grief is a health disparity: 65% of all children who experience the loss of a caregiver associated with COVID in the United States are from a racial or ethnic minority. This is a very challenging, confusing time. The experience of grief is usually not what people expect. There is anger, intrusive thoughts, you can't stop thinking about it. It's quite normal. People often have the desire to talk about their experience, to try to put into words what it means. I recommend especially reaching out to people who may have had their own experience to help them enter a stage of healing grief.
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