"Divine love is more then adrenaline
and dopamine.”
“Certainly. There’s phenylethylamine and oxytocin.
Love is a most complex and difficult problem.”
Joan Slonczewski, Brain Plague (2000) [67]
Swedish folklore, advocates to capture the love of someone you
should carry an apple in your armpit for a day, and
then give it to the intended lover. According to the Yusufzai Pukhtun the most powerful
love potion in Northern Pakistan is water that has
washed the body of a dead leatherworker.
That was folk wisdom now we have neuroscience.
And here is a neuroscientific view on love.
Underlying human love is a set of basic brain systems
for lust, romantic attraction and attachment that have
evolved among mammals. Lust promotes mating with
any appropriate partner, attraction makes us choose
and prefer a particular partner, and attachment allows
pairs to cooperate and stay together until their
parental duties have been completed. The
evolutionary systems form a ground on top of which
the cultural and individual variants of love are built.
They represent human universals which are expressed
in different cultural ways.
Neuroimaging studies of romantic love have
shown activations in regions linked to the oxytocin
and vasopressin systems, activation in reward systems,
as well as systematic deactivation in regions
linked with negative affect, social judgement and
assessment of other people’s emotions and intentions.
Source: ORIGINAL PAPER
Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals
Between Us
Julian Savulescu & Anders Sandberg
No comments:
Post a Comment