http://youtube.com/watch?v=GB8nCE2EoIw
"It became apparent to me that
romantic love was a drive -- a
drive as strong as thirst,
as hunger..." --Helen Fisher
If romantic passion is hardwired into our brains by millions of years
of evolution, it is not an emotion; it is a drive as powerful as
hunger.
Anthropologist Fisher argues that much of our romantic behavior is
hard-wired in [her] provocative examination of love. Her case is
bolstered by behavioral research into the effects of two crucial
chemicals, norepinephrine and dopamine, and by surveys she conducted
across broad populations.
When we fall in love, she says, our brains create dramatic surges of
energy that fuel such feelings as passion, obsessiveness, joy and
jealousy. Fisher devotes a fascinating and substantial chapter to the
appearance of romance and love among non-human animals, and composes
careful theories about early humans in love.
In 1996, Dr. Helen Fisher, with a team of behavioral scientists, set
out to investigate the mystery of "being in love." Their objective was
to find out why we love, why we choose the people that we choose, the
differences between male and female feelings as it pertains to
romance, animal love, love at first sight, love and lust, love and
marriage, evolution of love, love and hate, and the brain in love. The
culmination of this study has now been summed in Dr. Fisher's book,
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.
The method used by Dr. Fisher and her team was to ask their love-
smitten subjects to look at a photograph of his or her beloved, and
secondly to look at another photograph of an acquaintance who
generated no positive or negative romantic feelings. Pictures were
taken of the brain and blood flows in the brain were also recorded.
In order to scientifically study these themes, Dr. Fisher and her team
used the newest technology for brain scanning known as functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The team endeavored to record men
and women's brain activity, after they had just fallen madly in love.
The principal objective was to record the range of feelings associated
with "being in love." ...Fisher proved what psychologists had until
recently only suspected: when you fall in love, specific areas of the
brain "light up" with increased blood flow.
One of her many surprising conclusions suggests that, since "four-year
birth intervals were the regular pattern of birth spacing during our
long human prehistory," our modern brains still deal with
relationships in serially monogamous terms of about four years.
Indeed, Fisher gathered data from around the world showing that
divorce was most prevalent in the fourth year of marriage, when a
couple had a single dependent child.
Fisher also reports on the behaviors that lead to successful lifelong
partnerships and offers, based on what she's observed, numerous tips
on staying in love...
This book ...goes beyond observable behaviors to consider their
underlying brain mechanisms. Most people think of romantic love as a
feeling. Fisher, however, views it as a drive so powerful that it can
override other drives, such as hunger and thirst, render the most
dignified person a fool, or bring rapture to an unassuming wallflower.
This original hypothesis is consistent with the neurochemistry of
love. While emphasizing the complex and subtle interplay among
multiple brain chemicals, Fisher argues convincingly that dopamine
deserves center stage. This neurotransmitter drives animals to seek
rewards, such as food and sex, and is also essential to the pleasure
experienced when such drives are satisfied. Fisher thinks that
dopamine's action can explain both the highs of romantic passion
(dopamine rising) and the lows of rejection (dopamine falling).
Citing evidence from studies of humans and other animals, she also
demonstrates marked parallels between the behaviors, feelings and
chemicals that underlie romantic love and those associated with
substance addiction. Like the alcoholic who feels compelled to drink,
the impassioned lover cries that he will die without his beloved.
Dying of a broken heart is, of course, not adaptive, and neither is
forsaking family and fortune to pursue a sweetheart to the ends of the
earth.
Why then, Fisher asks, has evolution burdened humans with such
seemingly irrational passions? Drawing on evidence from living
primates, paleontology and diverse cultures, she argues that the
evolution of large-brained, helpless hominid infants created a new
imperative for mother and father to cooperate in child-rearing.
Romantic love, she contests, drove ancestral women and men to come
together long enough to conceive, whereas attachment, another complex
of feelings with a different chemical basis, kept them together long
enough to support a child until weaning (about four years).
Evidence indicates that as attachment grows, passion recedes. Thus,
the same feelings that bring parents together often force them apart,
as one or both fall in love with someone new. In this scenario, broken
hearts and self-defeating crimes of passion become the unfortunate by-
products of a biological system that usually facilitates
reproduction.
Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry
of Romantic Love - by Helen Fisher
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Love-Chemistry-Romantic/dp/0805069135
http://thebestreviews.com/review20806
http://www.theswartzfoundation.org/mind-brain-2006.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love
http://www.helenfisher.com/
http://homepage.mac.com/helenfisher/Sites/articlespage/a2.htm
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/02/14/science.of.love/index.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/
http://www.curledup.com/whywelov.htm
