Science Explains Why You Fall In Love
It’s not just the simple sparkle between couples or compatibility of lovers’ likes and dislikes that explain why people fall in love. Perceiving good outer and inner qualities doesn’t necessarily explain what’s behind the feeling of love. They don’t explain why a person becomes passionate to his or her significant other but feels only brotherly or sisterly love toward another.
Ask a doctor in lab coats and find no answer. Ask a crown king and a poor commoner and find no answer. Ask your mom and dad and find no answer. Look it up in the books and still find no answer. To find answer for the unanswerable inquiry, scientists put on their lab coats and try to seek answer from within humans themselves.
A recent study show that love is more than just a basic emotion, but something that involves cognition, which is the mental faculty or process of acquiring knowledge by the use of reasoning, intuition, or perception. Focusing on brain function, the study found 12 areas of the brain that seem to be responsible why you develop attraction instantly or gradually. According to lead scientist Stephanie Ortigue of Syracuse University, these brain areas release euphoria-inducing chemicals that include dopamine, oxytocin also known as love hormone, adrenaline, and vasopressin that was found to cause aggression and territorial behavior among animals.
In the analysis made on the first brain study of romantic love, different brain areas are activated for different kinds of love. Truly and deeply in love couples showed brain activity in the dopaminergic subcortical system. This particular brain area was also found to be active in people feeling euphoria due to drugs like cocaine. Other brain areas that are activated are the posterior hippocampus associated with memory, insula and anterior cingulated cortex for reward processing, as well as areas linked to emotions. In the periaqueductal gray matter or brain area with mother-child bonding receptors, on the other hand, is highly active in mothers while simply staring at the picture of their child.
While results of the study are said to provide help in treating depression and emotional stress caused by heartbreaks, perhaps scientists could also wear their lab coats and be able to find ways to induce different kinds of love using chemicals. Maybe, if scientists consider the chemicals in the so called love potions, they could shed some light on this matter.
