When science explains love

I apologize for my english. My native language is french. I tried to do my best in english to provide you good content to the english community too.

Source of Klimt's painting

You don't fall in love by accident. It's a shame, but it's the sad reality: love at first sight doesn't exist: it's our hormones and other complex chemistry that guide us (and which are found mainly in the brain!). But, you know, romantics don't want to hear about it!

The loving brain

According to Yves Agid, who is Professor of Neurology, a neuroscientist and the founding Scientific Director of the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute, the cupid's arrow does not really reach our heart but rather our brain!

What happens in the brain when you fall in love?

We discover it in front of us: this loved one. We don't know yet that we love him but our whole body is beginning to live: the heart accelerates, the body goes from hot to cold etc. Everyone has their own physical symptoms that actually evoke an influx of emotions. And it happens to you all of a sudden! It's out of control!

And that's where scientists and more precisely neuroscientists ask themselves..."Here, what parts of the brain are activated when you fall in love?" They pull out their machines and analyze the brains with MRIs.

That's what allowed them to draw up a brain map of lovers!

Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki are two researchers who have received dozens of couples for an MRI. The principle: to show people images of unknown people and from time to time place an image of the loved one and see what happens in the brain. In fact, the central gray nuclei activate in the brain at the sight of a photo of the loved one!

Large central nuclei are also called basal ganglia. Here are two diagrams (different cuts/views)

The love is thus well and truly triggered by the brain (from baord the cerebral cortex) and then the central gray nuclei.

Researchers at Syracuse University have confirmed that when you fall in love, no less than twelve areas of the brain become swarming and mass produce different hormones such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopressin.

All these hormones make us feel euphoric.

All this happens in a small area of the brain called the hypothalamus. It's very small (+-nail size) and that's where you can find all the controls of the body's major functions such as eating, drinking, sleeping and keeping the body temperature constant.

Moreover, the hypothalamu is traversed by the nervous pathways of pleasure and suffering (which are in reality the systems that give rise to desire and sustain it).

Hypothalamus is also a gland that discharges secretions into the bloodstream to irrigate the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland is itself a very important gland because it is actually the one that controls all the other glands thanks to its hormones called stimulins which will then secrete sex hormones.

Falling in love in stages

At every stage of the passionate love parade, from passion to attachment, from the active passion of specific areas of our brain to the active activation of complex circuits.

For example, when you meet someone you like, your hypothalamus secretes testosterone. This hormone will arouse desire by causing the release of dopamine (which is, a neuro-mediator of pleasure and reward.).

The two bodies in love will also exchange other information thanks to the pheromones that will be captured by the two reptilian brains (which, as a reminder, are the most archaic part of your brain.

First smile and first word? It's the turn of phenylethylamine that will increase the euphoria! On this subject, do you know that this natural encephalic amphetamine is found in chocolate? That says a lot!

Then, during the first sexual intercourse, it is the turn of another hormone called luliberine (also and of course secreted in the hypothalamus of our brain) which takes over.

Finally, the two beings attach themselves because yet another hormone is revealed: it is oxytocin!

Of course, it's not that simple: other hormones are also involved. But the basic is there and it shows you that you have no control at all!

Moreover, do you know that "The more we make love, the more pleasure we have, so the more we care about our partner" says Professor Michel Reynaud, who is the head of the psychiatry and addictology department at Paul-Brousse University Hospital.

The end of the love state would last ninety days!

The love cycle begins with the honeymoon and ends 90 days later! I thought love lasted three years...

It is at this moment that we begin to discover the defects of the being that was so perfect. The merger ends and leaves room for the two entities that make up the couple. That's when young people start seeing friends and family again, for example. Before that, they only had eyes to be loved. It is also at this time that the couple faces their first challenge: to continue or separate. And to continue, you will have to learn to love the other as he really is!

Researchers at the University of Pavia in Italy have shown that intense emotions (such as love at first sight and the passion of the first few days) are accompanied by a high blood concentration of NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) which is actually a nerve growth factor.

This molecule is much higher in young lovers than in couples of longer duration.

Of course, besides that, there is also the psychological side (it's science, my dear fellow Steemiens, don't listen to those who say it's charlatanism! why you decide to love one person over another. But nevertheless, science is the true cupid's arrow!

At least now you know why love only lasts for a while and that if you want to stay with the loved one, you'll have to work on yourself!

When science explains love

The loving brain

What happens in the brain when you fall in love?

Falling in love in stages

The end of the love state would last ninety days!

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