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great lovers of food and any big celebration—whether it be a graduation or a recital—has always been celebrated at a wonderful restaurant. But in France, my food experiences stepped up to a whole new, more sophisticated level. While I was a poor college student, you could still eat (and drink) like a king in Bordeaux, especially if you had a native son like François as a guide. Yes, I worked and studied like the science geek that I was, but I ate, drank, and spent leisure time playing the piano like a sexy flirtatious exotic French woman in love. Look at me! The world-class wallflower from Sunnyvale had a fantastic French boyfriend and a rich social, food, and cultural life. It was easy to do in such an enriching, stimulating environment.

    FOOD, WINE, AND BUILDING NEW BRAIN CELLS
    Living in France, it was not hard to eat a lot of delicious, flavorful French food and drink many delectable bottles of wine. Indeed, I tasted, sipped, and enjoyed wines of all kinds from all over France—from Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Provence, and Bordeaux. White, red, rose, and of course Champagne. All of these new tastes were literally turning on my brain. It turns out that experiments in rodents have shown that enriching your olfactory/gustatory environment does have a significant effect on the brain.
    Studies show that once we grow into adulthood, there are only two brain areas where neurogenesis (the birth of new neurons) can occur. The first brain area is the hippocampus, which is crucial for long-term memory and mood (more on these two features in upcoming chapters) and the second is the olfactory bulb, the brain area that is responsible for our sense of smell and therefore also contributes to our sense of taste. Studies show that if you enrich the olfactory environment of rats by giving them a nice big range of smells, you can enhance neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb and that the brain actually increases in size because of these new neurons. This suggests that my French adventure was not only teaching me a lot of about food and wine appreciation, but might actually have been enhancing the size of my olfactory bulb. While changes in size of the olfactory bulb in people with enhanced olfactory experiences have never been explicitly studied, it would be fascinating to examine this potential form of human brain plasticity. I feel a new brain plasticity experiment with sommeliers coming on!

    In short, I loved France. I loved my life with François. But as the year passed by I knew that soon I would have to face the reality that I was due back at U.C. Berkeley to start my critical senior year and begin the next phase of my life. This was a difficult time for me because from a very early age I have always had a hard time letting go. I was the kid who worked herself into a tizzy and cried at the end of the summer because I didn’t want it to end and to go back to school. And I loved school. I just didn’t like endings. I think it was the fear that if something wonderful like summer vacation ended, I would never get it back. I don’t know where this fear came from—maybe I had a toy taken away from me as a child—I can’t say for sure. But what I do know is that I had that terrible feeling of impending sadness in the spring of 1986 when my year in France was coming to an end.
    In fact, I seriously thought about staying in France to finish my college career and do graduate work there. That would work, right? I was already working in a lab. A wise French scientist working in the Jaffard lab, to whom I will always be grateful, convinced me that I would be much better off going to an excellent graduate program in the United States. He was right, but that was not the answer I wanted to hear. My parents, who were none too happy about my involvement with a piano tuner/musician with no degree or higher education of any kind, wanted me back home and attending classes at U.C. Berkeley immediately.
    But I didn’t want this magical year or my