Researches on Love... it's chemical!

[o_broodingdude]

Love is the drug
Romance may be tied to reward system that can cause addiction
By Rhonda Grayson



Tuesday, February 14, 2006; Posted: 12:05 p.m. EST (17:05 GMT)

Researchers say that romantic love triggers reward centers in the brain.
Image:

Doing something novel triggers dopamine in the brain, which stimulates feelings of attraction.


And stare into your partner's eyes. Psychologist Art Aron conducted an experiment in which he had pairs of the opposite sex stare into each other's eyes for about two minutes. Most of the couples who were strangers reported feelings of attraction. One couple went on to get married.

Source: Psychologist Art Aron
NEW YORK (CNN) -- People all over the world describe falling in love in similar terms: euphoria, exhilaration, elation.

It's an intense craving for the person they adore. But just how does the brain process romantic love?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of "Why We Love," studied the brain circuitry that makes falling in love the intense, passionate emotion it is. She found that the brain sees romantic love as a reward, stimulating activity in the same areas that light up when a person seeks any kind of a reward, whether it's chocolate, money or drugs.

"It became apparent to me that romantic love was a drive -- a drive as strong as thirst, as hunger. People live for love, they kill for love, they die for love, they sing about love," Fisher said.

"There are myths and legends about love. The oldest love poetry is over 4,000 years old. The world is littered with all kinds of artifacts that stem from this basic mating drive."

Fisher went on a quest to unravel the mystery of the brain in love. She teamed up with Art Aron, a psychologist and professor at Stony Brook University in New York and Lucy Brown, a professor in neurology and neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

They studied 17 people who recently had fallen madly in love -- people who were spending 80 percent of their waking hours not being able to think of anybody else. The subjects had been in love an average of seven months.

The findings were published last year in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

For the study, Fisher developed a questionnaire about passionate love, including such questions as "Would you die for your partner?" She said she was shocked by the answers to that query: All of the subjects said they would.

What especially surprised her was the casual way in which they responded.

The participants were put into an MRI machine and asked to stare at photographs of their sweethearts and then neutral photos that called for no positive or negative feelings. When the researchers were able to look inside the brain in love, they said they were struck by the results.

The part of the brain that lit up the strongest was that associated with rewards and pleasure, a finding not nearly as poetic as romantics would have thought. It turns out that, to the brain, love is just another reward, much like chocolate or money, or like a drug to an addict. This brain system gets used every time you want something.

Romantic love, it turns out, is a reward, the researchers say.

"We certainly think of romantic love as something that's magical, and the magic is here and here," Brown said, pointing to the part of the brain that lit up during the experiment, the brain stem region known as the ventral tegmental area. There, pigmented cells known to contain dopamine send messages to a part of the brain called the caudate nucleus.

When Brown started the study, she said she thought she was studying a strong positive emotion.

"Now I have changed the way I think about early-stage romantic love," she said. "It's a motivation; the person [we're in love with] is a goal. Emotions come and go. We feel euphoria, but we feel anxiety, too. This core system that is driving the person who is in love toward their sweetheart, that is much more important in a sense than an emotion."

Aron added, "When you're intensely in love, and especially if it's being reciprocated, there is an incredible sense of exhilaration. You feel this person is the most wonderful person in the world, and if they were part of you -- if you were together -- your life would be perfect."

Fisher agreed: "Romantic love is not only an emotion, it's a basic mating drive, and it's stronger than the sex drive."

Although the early characteristics of romantic love don't last forever -- the pounding heart, the obsessive thinking and craving -- in good relationships they will transfer to a different level, a stage of love called "attachment," Fisher said.

In her own studies of more than 800 people older than 45, Fisher found that they showed just as much romantic passion as those under 25.

In fact, romantic love can be triggered at any age. Fisher said she interviewed an 8-year-old boy who perfectly described his intense passion for an 8-year-old girl. She said she also knows couples in their 70s and 80s who are madly in love.

When asked if placing love under a microscope takes away some of the mystery and romance, Fisher smiled.

"You can know every ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and you still sit down and eat that chocolate cake and it's wonderful," she said. "In the same way, you can know all the ingredients of romantic love and still feel that passion."

[o_shadow34721]

so now that we know what causes it exactly, perhaps we can derive a cure?

[o_skanky butterpuss]

kids these days

[o_sobe green]

I read something similiar to this once. Sometimes I just get weirded out by some of the things people research.

[o_deadly furby]

Rather than start a new thread I thought this might fit in well here.

Faith in God is down to your genes, says Researcher
15 Nov 2004
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...?newsid=16378#


Whether or not you are religious and believe in God is down to your genes, says Dean Hamer, National Cancer Institute's Gene Structure Regulation Unit, USA. He reckons Jesus, Mohammed (the prophet) and Buddha probably carried the ‘God Gene' in them. Church representatives have criticised Dean Hamer's findings.

Church representatives say Hamer fails to understand exactly what faith is and what it entails.

This is not the first time Hamer has come out with controversial findings. In 1993, he said there was a DNA sequence associated with homosexuality.

Hamer claims there is a version of the VMAT2 gene that is a ‘God Gene'. The presence of this version of the gene makes the person who has it more religious and spiritual than people who do not.

Hamer has written a book called ‘The God Gene - How Faith is Hard Wired into our Genes'.

Hamer studied 2,000 DNA samples. He interviewed 2,000 people extensively (226 questions in each interview). The questions, among other things, looked at how spiritual a person is and what their level of faith in God is.

He found that the VMAT2 Gene was significantly more common among people who believed in a higher spiritual being. According to his research, whether or not your upbringing is religious has no bearing on how religious you turn out to be - but the presence of the VMAT2 Gene version does.

Hamer believes Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus probably had the version of the VMAT2 Gene. He said they all experienced a series of mystical experiences or alterations in consciousness.

Hamer said "This means that the tendency to be spiritual is part of genetic make-up. This is not a thing that is strictly handed down from parents to children. It could skip a generation - it's like intelligence."

A spokesman for the Church of Scotland, Donald Bruce, said Hamer's declarations were nothing more than a publicity stunt as his book is launched. He said God makes himself available to all equally and there is no such thing as a God Gene.

According to Donald Bruce, Hamer had told him a year ago that the term ‘God Gene' was misleading.

This is not the first time the Church has disagreed with the findings of scientists. Many years ago, the Church got upset with Galileo because he said the earth went round the sun, he also said the earth was round (not flat).

[Jiggles]

Most likely, Faith is determined by your genes about as well as Obesity, or many other traits. To put a concept as abstract as "faith" on a single gene is rather dubious, anyway.

[o_broodingdude]

I read somewhere that people who are devout in their faith are further back on the evolutionary scale, because the part of the brain that believes things (like that) is underdeveloped.

[o_yomamashouse]

Nature probably put the genes in people to make them more controllable. I took a few history courses and understanding religion's role in society is important in those classes. It basically made it easier for leaders among humans to control those below them on the social ladder. Instead of "He's the king you're the peasant, tough shit" it is "He was sent here by god to rule over us". The second one was a lot more persuasive than the first.

I wonder how many "You're going to hell" and "Repent now!" letters that poor guy got.

[o_nezumi]

I think the assertion that 'people are faithful because of their genes and nothing else' is funny.

Like: "The presence of this version of the gene makes the person who has it more religious and spiritual than people who do not"

and

"whether or not your upbringing is religious has no bearing on how religious you turn out to be"

Either this guy was grossly misquoted or really ignorant.

[o_neoro]

I'd like to see that experiment repeated 1000 times.

[o_captain_cadaver]

Originally Posted by Neoro

I'd like to see that experiment repeated 1000 times.

Im working on it, I put a rat in a maze and see if he goes for the cheese or the Jesus wafer.

[o_deadly furby]

Originally Posted by captain_cadaver

Im working on it, I put a rat in a maze and see if he goes for the cheese or the Jesus wafer.

WOW.........I'd pay to see that video...