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Well Being: Our amazing brain, governed by the emotions

David Brooks, the witty New York Times columnist, is a local boy (he grew up in Wayne and went to Radnor High) who has written a sensational new book, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.

David Brooks, the witty New York Times columnist, is a local boy (he grew up in Wayne and went to Radnor High) who has written a sensational new book,

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement.

The book is appealing in many ways, not the least of which is Brooks' ability to synthesize vast amounts of research and present it in a fashion that calls to mind the hilarious social satire of Tom Wolfe.

The gist of the book in two words: Emotion rules.

Or, as Blaise Pascal so elegantly expressed it: "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

In describing the source of emotion and intuition, we often talk about the heart and the gut. In truth, emotion resides in the brain, along with reason, occupying a realm that is largely unconscious.

"The conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species," Brooks told me, "but the unconscious mind drives our decisions."

The conscious mind has a processing capacity 200,000 times weaker than the unconscious, Brooks discovers, and no more than 5 percent of a person's emotional perceptiveness can be explained by the sort of overall cognitive intelligence we track with an IQ score.

His book aims to change our understanding of how we function and conduct our lives (we have a lot less control than we think). At the least, it will deepen your regard for the marvel that is the human brain.

The brain has more than 100 billion cells or neurons. The space where two branches for different neurons meet is called a synapse, where the brain stores information. Scientists estimate that humans create 1.8 million synapses per second from their second month in utero to their second birthday.

Depending on how much your brain is stimulated, you could end up with 100 trillion, 500 trillion or 1,000 trillion synapses. The number of particles in the known universe is about one-tenth that number!

Imagine a football stadium filled with spaghetti. Now imagine it shrunk down to skull size, and much more complicated.

The way the brain operates is how we're wired to operate as well, Brooks argues.

"Your unconscious, the inner extrovert, wants you to reach outward and connect," Brooks writes. "It wants to entangle you in the thick web of relations that are the essence of human flourishing."

Much of this is rooted in biology. For instance, we possess what are called "mirror neurons."

"When I see you, I reenact what you're doing, and that's how I understand you," Brooks told me. "When we're talking, the rhythm of our words will begin to match, our vocabulary and breathing patterns will become similar. That's how deeply interpenetrated we are."

Among our brain chemicals is an "affiliative neuropeptide" called oxytocin that surges when people are enjoying close social bonds (a mother suckling her child; two lovers gazing into each other's eyes; friends or relatives hugging). Oxytocin, which produces a powerful feeling of contentment, is "nature's way of weaving people together," Brooks says.

This is bad news for loners and introverts, those of us who, to quote Thoreau, have "never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

"The research shows very clearly that the more people you see and have in your life, the better your chances of being healthy and happy," Brooks told me. "It also shows that we innovate better and share ideas more fully when we communicate face to face."

People are lousy judges of what makes them happy, Brooks writes. They tend to overvalue work, money, and real estate, to undervalue intimate bonds. The deeper the relationships a person has, the happier he or she will be. People in long-term marriages are much happier than people who aren't. People with more friends have lower stress levels and longer lives.

By his own admission, Brooks is awkward at expressing emotion and he savors solitary time. He writes his column at home, away from the interruptions and distractions of the office, but on reporting days, he tries to talk to at least three politicians ("compulsively social creatures; most of us need food and sleep, they need people").

Working on the book has made him more aware of the value of relationships, not only in the places he monitors professionally, such as Congress and the White House, but also in his personal life. He is trying to preserve high school friendships and reconnect with his oldest pals from summer camp.

"To be social, you don't have to be a gregarious, life-of-the-party type," Brooks said. "A lot of the people I commune with have been dead for hundreds of years, but their words and ideas survive. I think that's completely social, harvesting the best of Burke or Madison, as opposed to party chatter."