What is love? Science kinda has the answer
A neuroscientist and a biological anthropologist tackle an age-old question
IS LOVE AN emotion, an urge, brain chemistry, or something else entirely? It’s the one question that has dominated our culture and relationships for millions of years. But what is love? It's powerful enough to drive us to create new life or to destroy it, but while countless books, poems, films, plays, and careers have been made out of trying to decipher it, or at least represent it, can we pin down what it actually is?
WIRED asks neuroscientist Gabija Toleikyte and biological anthropologist Helen Fisher for their take.
What is love?
Both scientists agreed that love is not something that can be controlled, curated or switched on or off. Instead, it arises from the depths of our subconscious. “Our subconscious mind has about ten times more information than our rational brain,” Toleikyte told WIRED. “So when we actually fall in love with a person it might seem like quite a momentary experience, however the brain is working really hard to compute and to produce that feeling.” This is what Fisher labels romantic love, something she somewhat unromantically describes as “a basic drive that evolved millions of years ago in order to enable us and focus our attention on just one partner and start the mating process.” So it's a complex series of computations of the subconscious brain that gives us an emotional experience we can’t control.
How can we tell if what we’re feeling is definitely love?
Everything about the beloved takes on special meaning, said Fisher. “The car they drive is different from every car in the parking lot. The street they live on, the house they live in, the books they like, everything about this person becomes special.” While you might be able to list what you don’t like about them, you have an ability to sweep this aside and focus on the positive. Then there’s the intense energy and mood swings brought about by love - elation when things are going well, to terrible despair when they don’t text, write or invite you out.
Physically, love causes a dry mouth, a feeling of butterflies in the stomach, weak knees, separation anxiety, and craving for sex as well as an emotional union. “You want them to call, to write, and there’s an intense motivation to win the person - what people will do when they are in love is quite remarkable,” Fisher said.
"Love evolved to allow us to start the mating process with a certain individual in order to send our DNA into tomorrow" Gabija Toleikyte, neuroscientist
In one study conducted by Fisher, 17 new lovers (ten women and seven men) who had been happily in love for around seven and a half months, had their brains scanned. The scans showed activity in the ventral tegmental area, a region of the brain that makes dopamine and sends the stimulant to other areas. “This factory is part of the brain’s reward system, the brain network that generates wanting, seeking, craving, energy, focus and motivation,” Fisher writes. This, she found, means lovers are ‘high’ on a natural speed.
If you all liked my article, then to know more such information, follow me on matrubharti and if possible, follow me on Instagram also.
Instagram:- @thenikhilsharma27
