Curiosities about the study of love

Curiosities about the study of love

Love has always been a mysterious subject, one of the most powerful experiences we experience, often seeking answers to our questions in classical literature such as poetry or philosophy. But for some time now, scientists have worried about investigating what happens in our brain when we fall in love. Today we will see a very interesting study of love.

Helen Fisher, one of the most prestigious anthropologists in the US, is one of the scientists who has researched the most on this subject, standing out in the biology of love and attraction. Below, we present some of the results of his numerous studies and research.

Love, impulse or emotion?

From his research on the study of love, Fisher offers a tripartite vision of love that originates in three basic, interconnected brain systems. These systems are as follows:

Sexual impulse It originates in the hypothalamus - an area related to hunger and thirst - awakening the desire to experiment with different people, to look for our partners.

Romantic love. It originates in the reptilian brain - the area responsible for basic survival instincts - and occurs when dopamine is released. It is related to selective sexual attraction and contact and sexual exclusivity. It can be very dangerous, since it involves the experimentation of many joys if we are reciprocated or many sorrows if we are rejected, in addition to the character of possession.

Attachment. It produces the activation of the pale ventral - related to the senses of taste and pleasure. Constituting love, that emotional bond that sustains couples and goes beyond passion.

Thus Fisher assured that:

“Some people have sex and then fall in love. Others may fall in love with someone with whom they have never had sex and with whom they will never have sex. Some may feel a feeling of attachment to a friend and years later look at it with different eyes. It all depends on the person".

But, according to Fisher's study of love, the three brain systems are important, since every couple should try to do romantic things, perform activities that increase the feeling of attachment and try to have a good sex life.

In addition, from scanners made to a sample of volunteers, he noticed that the area activated by romantic love was far from the cerebral emotional part, which would later lead to affirm that love was not an emotion.

In contradiction to popular beliefs, it is considered as a natural physiological impulse, similar to eating or drinking, existing because of the need to procreate, since the activated areas were those related to motivations, energy and focused attention. It would therefore be a motivation to transmit our genetic material to the next generation, thus highlighting its evolutionary perspective.

Love is, therefore, according to the study of love carried out by Helen Fisher, an impulse that has been developed to favor pairing.

And in the attraction ...

Why do we like a specific person and we are not attracted to the rest? Actually, the answer to this question is yet to be discovered if we get to do it. The only thing that is known is that the attraction involves cultural components, as well as chemical and genetic components.

Fisher even mentions that we fall in love with people we find mysterious, that we don't know well. That touch of mystery often keeps us alive to continue discovering the other and surprise us.

Is it a matter of chemistry?

In his research, Fisher observed in the images of the brain in love, two very active regions. Next, we are going to expose those two regions that Fisher found in his study of love:

The caudate nucleus. Primitive region related to the brain reward system, sexual arousal, feelings of pleasure and motivation to get rewards. From it, we discern which activity will be more pleasant or anticipate how we will feel in certain circumstances.

The ventral tegmental area. Area located in the brainstem consisting of dopamine pathways. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that controls the processes of attention, motivation and objective fulfillment.

So when we fall in love it seems that we raise our levels of dopamine and norepinephrine (controls the states of euphoria and loss of appetite and sleep) and decrease the amount of serotonin in our body, behaving similarly to the processes of addiction, since these Chemical substances are natural derivatives of opium.

Therefore, as the crush progresses, some dependence begins to develop. Although later the relations between these change and fluctuate, since that state of “drug addiction” does not last a lifetime.

Therefore, according to Fisher's study of love, love would be like a cocktail of chemical substances and although none of this changes how we fall in love or the suffering we feel when a relationship ends, it helps us to know a little more about some of the supposed rules that hide behind that great stranger called love.