ABSTRACT
Neurobiological research shows that brain development is experience-dependent and highly sensitive to environmental change. While safe and genuine interactions with a caring other strengthen the child's inherent predispositions for creative living, negative early relational experiences have an anti-developmental impact on the brain. The bond of Love is the healing agent that breaks the binds of time; it kindles a light in the darkness and warms a wounded heart back to life. Like the walking dead, the emotionally malnourished teen is a creature of hunger yearning for the nourishment in the form of love, warmth and safety that he never received. In the zombie culture, it is the bite from a zombie that causes this gruesome transition from human to monster. Like an airborne virus turning the living into zombies, catching the 'love bug' could be described as an infectious condition characterised by an impairment of normal cognitive, emotional and behavioural functioning.
