Our Great Symbols Are Empty

A poetic and scientific investigation into the maternal brain changes and their consequences on both the physical and mental health of women, in relation not to her child, but on them as humans.

Last year I asked myself, do mothers exist without their children? Would we know of Mary without Jesus?

80% of women become mothers, yet so little is investigated about this role and its consequences, on their own terms and not just in how it will affect her child. Yet every person in this world was birthed by a woman. Think about it, all 7.7 billion of us. However the NIH spends 11% specifically on women's health, let alone to mothers, and this is a pattern in many countries.

I wasn’t the same person I was before my children. When the mist finally cleared, I was finally able to stare at the world underneath my feet and understood: I was just not in the same place. My whole evaluation of an environment had changed, it was now spiked, saturated. And the implications of this new world is what birthed this 5 year unconscious photographic investigation: everyday scenes, family and now, female brains, all by my hands distorted, perverted.

For the last 7 months I’ve spent all my time vastly researching scientific studies on the maternal and the female brains, and their changes. I've investigated countless neuroscience papers, discussed with scientists and even had a visit to the neurosurgical O.R. in use. This project (exhibition and book) is a diary of both these journeys: the journey as a mother, the journey as a researcher.

A diary weaving together a truth lived by so many yet understood by so few, with the threads of candid instant photography, poetry and science.

For the viewer, the front door is art, but the room she/he will find behind this door is fact. For mothers, this is a path they have walked before, I’m handing them a map for context and better navigation. Yet I’m more interested in non-mothers (both male and female) joining me on this journey. Hoping that through better understanding and empathy society will invest more in this maternal world, by the way of scientific research and policies, and better the health conditions for 80% of these women who we know so little from, yet carry society on their shoulders.

All images are made on instant film, Fuji and Polaroid.

The background images are based on altered projections of real MRI and Histology images from mostly Hispanic, African American and Caucasian women in ages ranging from 30-50 years old. The original images i used to create my own are credit of the Allen Institute who kindly approved by written form the use for this project in form of a book and an exhibition.

The other personal scenes are also made on instant film, with either light effects on location or pre-exposure alteration of the film to achieve the heavy saturation or unnatural color expressions needed to mirror my maternal view.

Thank you.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"From boredom to soft fascination" - "Women can recall emotional memories more quickly, can recall more emotional memories in a given period of time, and report that the emotional memories they recall are richer, more vivid, and more intense. In general, women tend to experience greater enhancement of their memory by emotion (Seidlitz and Diener 1998). The stronger effect of emotion on women’s memories is not entirely beneficial, however. Emotion can also impair memory in some situations, and this impairment is accentuated in women. In addition, the fact that emotional memories tend to be stronger for women may be linked to the greater prevalence of depression and some types of anxiety disorders in women" (Davidson and others 2002). Women are twice as likely to experience depression and PTSD than men. Background image created based on a Blockface Coronal Slice Brain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Forget all words before "Love"" - In a long list of words given to a person there is great memory for an emotional word than for neutral words. However memory for neutral words before the emotional word is impaired and the words forgotten. The size of the emotional impairment was found to be twice as large for women than for men (Hamann, 2005). Background image created based on a T1 Sagittal MRI image of a 48 year old caucasian woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"No Time For Fiction" - A study by Dr Pereira and Dr Morrell found that during motherhood, the brain recruits the discriminating powers of the infralimbic cortex (a region in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is important in tonic inhibition of subcortical structures and emotional responses, such as fear) to prioritise their pups over cocaine. “Our results indicate a fundamental role for the infralimbic cortex in prioritizing the commitment of behavior, time, and resources toward offspring and associated stimuli and biasing decision making accordingly. Through its projections (…) the infralimbic cortex can guarantee the high expression of caregiving behaviors during the demanding task of parenting." Background image created based on a Coronal Tissue image of a 38 year old African American woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - "Can you see the fireworks" - Polaroid 600 Film
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"Can you see the fireworks" - Polaroid 600 Film

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"I gave my life to Jesus" - Fear extinction depends on the activation of MDA receptors (located in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and the amygdala). In non-mother females, like in males, if you block these receptors the subjects will not be able to extinguish fear. Yet Dr Bronwyn Graham proved this is not the same in mothers. In her studies she blocked these receptors and the mothers still extinguished fear reasonably well. This study potentially shows that mothers dont use the same systems as males and non-mother females in their brain to relinquish fear. Their maternal brains have experienced long term changes and have their own system for something so vital and human as fear extinction. Background image created based on the Sagittal MRI of my own head, a 41 year old Hispanic/Latino woman.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Importing love" - Dr Bronwyn Graham shows that the hormone estradiol enhances fear extinction recall. High levels of estradiol enhances activity in the amygdalae, medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Hormonal contraceptives, which reduced estradiol levels, potentially impair fear extinction recall. Is there maybe a correlation between the use of hormonal contraceptives and the growing levels of anxiety in the female population of the last decades? Background image created based on a Coronal view NISSL Stain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Have crueler words existed" - In 2017, Dr Susanna Carmona made a large study of women before and after pregnancy, and she found that the parallels between matrescence (transitioning into a mother) and adolescence were incredibly vast. Both mothers and adolescents experience a decrease in the cortical thickness, which leads to a decrease in surfical area (parts of the brain actually shrinks). There is a flatness in the cortical thickness and the folds in the brain. They also found that the more the decrease, the higher the response in the brain. So it had an inverse reaction, in which less volume means more activation. “The more the brain changes, the more the score that tests the maternal attachment” Background image created based on a Coronal Left Subcortex image of a 48 year old caucasian woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Let us praise famous women" - In a 2011 study by R. Gupta et all, they explain that decision making can be heavily impaired with damage to the amygdalae. But the fascinating information is that when only one of the amygdalae is damaged, depending on if it’s left or right, it can affect females and males differently in decision making and in even in social behavior. “We have found evidence for an interaction between sex and laterality of amygdala functioning, such that unilateral damage to the right amygdala results in greater deficits in decision-making and social behavior in men, while left amygdala damage seems to be more detrimental for women.” Background image created based on a Coronal view NISSL Stain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Skin is destiny" - In a 2020 study by Schäfer, they researched a sample of 164 mothers participating with at least one biological child. Moms were matched with 6 scents taken from clothes, one from her own child, one from a child in the same age group as her child and a similar genetic profile, one from a child in the same age group but a different genetic profile, one from a child of a different age group but a similar genetic profile, one from a child from a different age group and a different genetic profile, and lastly a shirt that hadn’t been worn. Mothers could recognise the smell of their own children, for the most part depending on the child’s age, they also consider it the most pleasant. The next preferred odour was from a child, not specifically in the same age group, but the one with a gene. Can moms smell genetics? Background image created based on a Coronal view NISSL Stain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - "This Is How We Multiply" - Polaroid 600 film
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"This Is How We Multiply" - Polaroid 600 film

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"The sum of us" - Women's brains shrink during pregnancy. Yet in 2021 Dr Hoekzema set up to study mothers’ brain’s 6 years after the birth of their (first and only) child. They had images from women pre conception, during pregnancy, and now 6 years post partum, as well as brain images from women who have never been pregnant as a control group. “We found that most pregnancy-induced grey matter volume reductions in brain regions persist at least six years after parturition. Based on grey matter volume changes at six years postpartum, we can classify women as having been pregnant or not with 91.67% of total accuracy.” 2191,5 days were women operate with a different set of tools than the ones they formerly knew. Background image created based on a Coronal view NISSL Stain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Palace of sweet revenge" - “The amygdala also interacts with the reward circuit to motivate maternal behaviors. Oxytocin receptors are also abundantly present in the amygdala. In rodents mothers, during the postpartum period, in response to infant stimuli, infant cry and smiles activate the amygdala, which has often been interpreted as a sign of emotional salience or positive emotion associated with attachment. On the other hand, in virgin rats, activation in the medial nucleus of the amygdala was associated with reduced maternal behaviors . Thus, while increased activation of the amygdala to infant stimuli is interpreted as a more negative response to infants among typical adults, in mothers, it can be associated with more positive responses to one’s own infant.” Kim et al, 2016 Background image created based on a Coronal tissue image of a 34 year old African American woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Birthed by a place" - In Denmark between 1975-2005 “A total of 1171 mothers and 658 fathers were admitted with a mental disorder to a psychiatric hospital during the first 12 months after parenthood. First time mothers had an increased risk of incident hospital admission with any mental disorder through the first 3 months after childbirth, with the highest risk 10 to 19 days post-partum. Among mothers, risk was also increased for psychiatric outpatient contacts (non-hospitalised) through the first 3 months after childbirth, also with the highest risk occurring 10 to 19 days postpartum. Unlike motherhood, fatherhood was not associated with any increased risk of hospital admission or outpatient contact." Munk-Olsen et al, 2006 Background image created based on the Sagittal MRI of my own head, a 41 year old Hispanic/Latino woman.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"A woman with no fear, no fear" - "Parental anxiety peaks immediately after childbirth and then begins to diminish during the first three to four months postpartum. This matches apparent increased responses to baby cry in postpartum anxiety circuits including the basal ganglia and orbitofrontal cortex that diminish over the first 4 months postpartum. This plasticity in anxiety circuits may be part of a healthy range of threat detection and harm avoidance, yet also perhaps an opportunity for problems to occur with such adaptations – in which abnormally reduced or excessive worry may be part of postpartum psychopathology.” Kim et al, 2016 A valid piece of information on why anxiety prevails in many women through the maternal experience. Background image created based on a Coronal left view image of a 34 year old African American woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Finding the constant reason for evil" - “We tracked women's cognitive performance from early pregnancy through to postnatal resumption of menstruation. On several cognitive tests, the sex of the foetus was unrelated to maternal performance. But specifically on difficult tests of working memory and spatial ability, a large and enduring effect of foetal sex was evident: women pregnant with boys consistently outperformed women pregnant with girls.” Claire Vanston and Neil Watson The sex of your baby does affect your cognition, with mother’s to boys having better working memory (temporary memory which we use for reasoning and decision making) than mothers with girls, in the pregnant and early postpartum period. . Background image created based on a public domain Brain Sand in Human Pineal Gland image, by the Berkshire Community College Bioscience Image Library.

© Carolina Echeverri - "All her pearls and blue notes" - Polaroid 600 film
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"All her pearls and blue notes" - Polaroid 600 film

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Looking at you hurts" - A study with data from thousands of mid-life subjects found an association between a younger brain and the number of pregnancies. With imaging data she could map the “Brain age prediction” and found that mothers, specially to 2-3 children had younger looking brains. “The subcortical regions actually showed particularly strong associations with previous childbirth. These are also regions that have shown to relate to maternal behaviour (amygdala, hypothalamus and nucleus accumbens)” “The more children a woman had, the more younger her patterns of brain activation were” Dr Anne-Marie de Lange She also tested men, but she failed to find the same effects on fathers. Background image created based on the Visual Cortex image of a 31 year old African American woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"She rested her head in darkness" - “In humans, Oxytocin (OT) decreases amygdala reactivity to threatening faces in males, but enhances amygdala reactivity to similar faces in females, suggesting sex-specific differences in OT-dependent threat-processing. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure amygdala activity in response to threatening and non-threatening scenes in 14 females. Although OT had no effect on participants' gazing behavior, it increased amygdala reactivity to scenes depicting social and non-social threat. In females, OT may, thus, enhance the detection of threatening stimuli in the environment.” Lischke et al, 2012 Background image created based on a Coronal Left Subcortex image of a 48 year old caucasian woman, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Her, a leader of men" - “In mice, if their pups are out of the nest and are vocalising, the mother pays attention to that, she will pick up the pup, bring it back and groom that pup. Thats empathy. We dont call is that because its maternal behaviour, it whats mothers should do, its to survive. But when it comes unconstraint when its not only directed to your offspring or partners or to others, then it becomes empathy. And in humans that goes further than into our direct family, its our community, and maybe thats what made us successful working together as a group, because we have empathy and compassion towards others as a society. And i think it has its origins in the maternal brain, that same oxytocin that helps the mom give birth, provide milk to her babies, is also directing that care towards others in our community” Dr Larry Young Background image created based on a Coronal Slice Brain image, approved for this use and credit of the Allen Institute.

© Carolina Echeverri - Image from the Our Great Symbols Are Empty photography project
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"Death is a girl" - In a Norwegian study in 2015 by Børge Sivertsen et al, they showed that “While insomnia symptoms increased during the early postpartum period, and declined by 2 years postpartum, the prevalence of insomnia remained very high at year 2 postpartum. Forty-one percent of the women still fulfilled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV criteria for an insomnia diagnosis according to the Bergen Insomnia Scale, which is substantially higher than prevalence estimates among women in the same age group (12–17 %) in the general population in Norway. The women in our study reported more nights with non-restorative sleep, and more days with sleep dissatisfaction.” Background image created based on public domain illustration from the British Library "Man embracing his origin civilization mental and moral faculties Illustrated" by G Dallas Lind.

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