~*XrYztaL's peRsoNaL World Of Craziness, LuSt, InSaniTy, pRocAstiNation & gReeD.*~

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

*{Anatomy of Love}*

Interesting Fact from Dr Helen Fisher from Rutgers University in the United States is an anthropologist who specialises in love.

i think its so true....esp the 4 yr cycle and the three different systems of brain...
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One of her many surprising conclusions suggests that, since "four-year birth intervals were the regular pattern of birth spacing during our long human prehistory," our modern brains still deal with relationships in serially monogamous terms of about four years.

Helen Fisher: I'm just about to put infatuated people, some people who are romantically obsessed, into a brain scanner and actually watch what happens in the brain so that we can understand more exactly which parts of the brain are involved, and therefore which chemicals are probably involved. But what I've done is I've looked at the psychological literature over the last 25 years and looked at all the things that happen to you when you fall in love. And those things that happen, that giddiness, that elation, that euphoria, that sleeplessness, that loss of appetite, is associated with high levels of dopamine, and norpenephrine. These are natural stimulants in the brain that give you feelings of elation. It's my hypothesis that when you feel that elation for somebody, and you're up in the middle of the night lying in bed, running over the conversation you had at work today, or in the gym, what's happening in the brain is your high levels of dopamine and norpenephrine and probably low levels of seratonin which gives you that obsessive thinking. You know, when you're in love with somebody, you can't stop thinking about them. I mean, this turns into an obsession.

Yes. You know, I basically divide love into more than one variety. I think that there's three different systems in the brain: one is the system for lust, associated primarily with testosterone in men and women. I mean if you inject a middle aged woman with testosterone, her sex drive goes up. The second brain system I think is romantic love, obsessive love, infatuation, associated in the brain I think, or I hypothesise, with high levels of dopamine and norpenephrin, these natural stimulants, and probably low levels of seratonin, which gives you that obsessive thinking. And the third chemical system in the brain I think is attachment, that sense of calm and peace and security that people have with a long-term partner. And other sciences have begun to think that that feeling of attachment is associated with vasopressin and oxytocin which are different chemicals in the brain.

So we basically have sort of different brain systems that operate to have us do different things, but they are related.

Rae Fry: So what about chemistry, that intangible thing that's supposed to make you fall in love with one person rather than somebody else? Is there any biological explanation for that?

Helen Fisher: There's something that American sexologist John Money calls your love map. And that's cultural. I mean we grow up, what these love maps are, we grow up as small children, we get used to our father's sense of humour, the amount of chaos around the house, our mother's whatever, and we build an unconscious list of things that we're looking for in a mate.
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5:40 PM | *{ ~* XrYztaL *~ }* | Comments

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