LIMBIC RESONANCE OF SELF. A COLLISION

There’s something unsettling about feeling your own identity shift—watching the version of yourself you’ve always known flicker, fragment, and reassemble into something unfamiliar. It’s not loss, not exactly, but recalibration, a quiet tremor deep within, as if a new self is forming in the marrow of my being. And lately, I’ve felt this most intensely in the spaces between my classes, between the rigid precision of science and the boundless, unpredictable realm of storytelling.

I exist in a strange trifecta: Behavioral Neuroscience, Neurobiology of Disease, and Screenwriting. Each one forces me to confront a question I’ve been avoiding for some time now: Do I still want to be a scientist?

The Scientist

In Behavioral Neuroscience, we explore the mechanics of human behavior, how neurons fire in intricate patterns, how synaptic changes lead to learning, how entire networks form the architecture of memory, emotion, and personality. It’s fascinating, even exhilarating at times, to know that everything we feel, everything we are, can be traced back to signals jumping between cells.

Then there’s Neurobiology of Disease, where the beauty of the brain is revealed in its breakdown. We study Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, schizophrenia—watching, in devastating detail, how a misfolded protein or a disrupted circuit can unravel a person’s identity. It’s humbling to see how fragile we really are.

I take notes diligently. I participate. I do well on exams. Yet, there’s a quiet dissonance within me.

Because while I study the mechanics of identity loss, I can’t help but wonder if I’m experiencing a version of it myself.

The Storyteller

I didn’t expect Screenwriting to challenge me the way it has. I thought it would be a fun elective, a creative outlet, something separate from the rigor of my scientific coursework. But in this class, I’m learning that stories—real stories—aren’t built from controlled variables and predictable outcomes. They thrive on uncertainty, contradiction, raw emotion.

One of our first assignments was deceptively simple: Create a character, but don’t decide everything about them. Let them surprise you.

In science, we conduct experiments to uncover truths. In storytelling, we create narratives to do the same. Both require curiosity. Both require a willingness to chase the unknown. And I seem to be doing pretty good on both. But there’s a difference.

In the lab, uncertainty is a problem to be solved. In writing, uncertainty is where the magic happens.

The Divide—or the Bridge?

I sit in the writing room, surrounded by people who, like me, are trying to bring their worlds to life. The air hums with energy—anxious, electric, powerful. There’s something intoxicating about the way ideas form, about the way a single spark of inspiration can spiral into something entirely unexpected. I don’t feel this in my neuroscience lectures. There, I feel prepared. I feel knowledgeable. But I don’t feel alive.

Maybe it’s fear that keeps me tethered to science—the comfort of its structure, the stability of its expectations. Maybe it’s the years I’ve spent defining myself as someone who relies on reason, who trusts evidence, who finds solace in knowing rather than wondering. But neuroscience itself tells me that identity is fluid. The brain is not static. It is plastic, rewiring itself with every experience, pruning old connections and forming new ones. Maybe this shift isn’t a crisis. Maybe it’s an adaptation.

The Choice—or the Possibility

Limbic resonance is the phenomenon of emotions being shared, mirrored between people, an unspoken synchrony of feeling, a biochemical process that allows us to experience connection. Some call it empathy, others—a pseudo-science version of telepathy.

But what if it can exist within the self?

What if different versions of me—past, present, future—are locked in their own resonance, struggling to harmonize? My past self, the scientist-in-training, clings to familiarity, while this new self, the storyteller, grows more insistent. For the first time, I think I’m ready to listen.

Maybe I’ll become both—a scientist by day, a screenwriter by night. Maybe neither. Maybe I’m still learning how to navigate this space where logic and creativity coexist, where data and dreams are not mutually exclusive. But I do know this: the self that feels most real, most present, most me—is the one that writes. The one that creates.

It’s funny, really. Not too long ago, my biggest concerns were what I’d eat for dinner, or which party seemed most tempting. Now, my mind is consumed by the weight of possibility. By the sheer gravity of choice. But for now, I suppose I can exist in both worlds. The scientist in me still has a paper on Alzheimer’s disorder to finish. And the storyteller in me has a character study on Nemo waiting to be written.