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More progress in the ongoing effort to reduce romance to an equation:
Swiss neurobiologist Andreas Bartels and his mentor, Semir Zeki, a professor at the University College of London, recruited 17 subjects who all claimed to have passionate feelings about their partners.
A functional MRI was used to measure brain activity while each subject was shown a photograph of the loved one, followed by photos of platonic friends.
Among all 17 subjects, the photo of the partner caused increased brain activity in four areas - and a "dimming" of activity in three areas, including the region of the brain that has been associated with moral judgement.
In another test, subjects were asked questions like, "If you had to break a law to save your wife/husband/partner, would you?" A test group of "normal" subjects showed a sudden increase in activity in the "moral judgement" brain region. An opposite reaction was seen among subjects who claimed to be passionately in love with their partners: that area of the brain responded with a drop in activity so abrupt that one of the researchers said, "It was as if the lights had been turned off in that area."
Their conclusion: passionate love is amoral. Your brain in love really doesn't care if sex before marriage makes Jesus weep. Your brain in love doesn't care that your lover is a hit man, or Ted Bundy. If you are Mary Kay Letourneau, the 34-year-old teacher who went to jail for having an affair with a 12-year-old student, gave birth to his first baby behind bars, and became pregnant with his second child as soon as she was released, you're aware of "a wild love that consumes you totally," as she has said, but you are oblivious to the fact that your children's father should be doing his homework.
Another part of the lovers' brains that dimmed-down was the right prefrontal cortex, which is demonstrably overactive in people suffering from depression. This could account for the euphoria of romantic love, but what about the flipside? The anxiety, the despair when the loved one is absent or seems to withdraw?
Blame dat' ol' debbil, Seratonin. Neurobiologist Donatella Marazetti theorizes that the anxiety component of romantic love has the same chemical cause as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). OCD patients and subjects who say they are passionately in love show the same low-level of seratonin and report, on average, the same frequency and severity of anxiety. Interestingly, mice become more sexually active when brain seratonin production is blocked.
Oh, what a picture. In love, we are alternately incapable of a depressed mood and incapable of feeling anything else; we have the moral judgement of stray cats; and we are as randy as lab mice!
So what are your plans for Valentines' Day? Candlelit dinner? Lobotomy?
*Inspired but only partially pasted from "I've Got You Under My Skin: a cocktail of brain chemicals underpins our most extreme and exalted emotions," Elle magazine. For the scientificially inclined and fashion-conscious, this fabulous issue of Elle kills two entertainment birds with one stone.
Swiss neurobiologist Andreas Bartels and his mentor, Semir Zeki, a professor at the University College of London, recruited 17 subjects who all claimed to have passionate feelings about their partners.
A functional MRI was used to measure brain activity while each subject was shown a photograph of the loved one, followed by photos of platonic friends.
Among all 17 subjects, the photo of the partner caused increased brain activity in four areas - and a "dimming" of activity in three areas, including the region of the brain that has been associated with moral judgement.
In another test, subjects were asked questions like, "If you had to break a law to save your wife/husband/partner, would you?" A test group of "normal" subjects showed a sudden increase in activity in the "moral judgement" brain region. An opposite reaction was seen among subjects who claimed to be passionately in love with their partners: that area of the brain responded with a drop in activity so abrupt that one of the researchers said, "It was as if the lights had been turned off in that area."
Their conclusion: passionate love is amoral. Your brain in love really doesn't care if sex before marriage makes Jesus weep. Your brain in love doesn't care that your lover is a hit man, or Ted Bundy. If you are Mary Kay Letourneau, the 34-year-old teacher who went to jail for having an affair with a 12-year-old student, gave birth to his first baby behind bars, and became pregnant with his second child as soon as she was released, you're aware of "a wild love that consumes you totally," as she has said, but you are oblivious to the fact that your children's father should be doing his homework.
Another part of the lovers' brains that dimmed-down was the right prefrontal cortex, which is demonstrably overactive in people suffering from depression. This could account for the euphoria of romantic love, but what about the flipside? The anxiety, the despair when the loved one is absent or seems to withdraw?
Blame dat' ol' debbil, Seratonin. Neurobiologist Donatella Marazetti theorizes that the anxiety component of romantic love has the same chemical cause as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). OCD patients and subjects who say they are passionately in love show the same low-level of seratonin and report, on average, the same frequency and severity of anxiety. Interestingly, mice become more sexually active when brain seratonin production is blocked.
Oh, what a picture. In love, we are alternately incapable of a depressed mood and incapable of feeling anything else; we have the moral judgement of stray cats; and we are as randy as lab mice!
So what are your plans for Valentines' Day? Candlelit dinner? Lobotomy?
*Inspired but only partially pasted from "I've Got You Under My Skin: a cocktail of brain chemicals underpins our most extreme and exalted emotions," Elle magazine. For the scientificially inclined and fashion-conscious, this fabulous issue of Elle kills two entertainment birds with one stone.
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