Today, before leaving the office to head home, I grabbed a copy of The Science of Happiness. I wanted something to read on BART that wasn't about macro economics and we had just been discussing the book's sales at a company meeting.
A lot of it seems pretty dumbed down, but some of it -- especially the parts about the brain chemistry of everyday things -- is really interesting. For instance:
"Recently, the London researchers Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki have shown that the intoxication experienced in love is also accessible to science. Looking on the Internet for volunteers who described themselves credibly as possessed by "genuine, deep and crazy love," mainly women, Bartels and Zeki examined their subjects using functional MRI. First they showed the women photos of friends with whom they had no sexual relationship and asked them to think of them intensely. During this time the scientists recorded the activity in their brains. Then they were shown photos of their lovers. While their brains were being examined a second time, they were to think of their partner. Comparing the two experiences, the scientists could see what happens when the brain is focused on the lover, and it turns out to closely resemble the pattern of brains activity under the influence of heroin and cocaine."
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The term lover implies they were sleeping with those dudes. I wonder what the results would look like if they were "crazy in love" with certain dudes, but not yet sexing. In other words: I bet the sex, not the being-in-love, creates that chemical change.
Yes, it was undoubtedly linked to the sex, but I think the reason they were calling it love in this instance is because all the other studies were done during sex or right after, so they measured the brain's state during the sex act. This was just when thinking of the lover... no arousal or sex happening at the time.
But it's definitely the hormones created during sex that causes it... I think that was much the message of that chapter.
Still, leads me to wonder why it happens with some people and not others. People don't seem to fall "crazy in love" with every person they shack up with.
Or do they?
They don't.
Right... right.
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