How love controls our brains

To fall in love and act like an idiot is a common thing when your body is controlled by hormones.

In 2004, two American researchers Lim and Young conducted an unusual experience that would change our attitude towards love, if we were not so inclined to romanticize it. As test subjects were meadow volets (rodents), or rather their separate species Microtus Ocrogaste. This type of vole is distinguished by the fact that the sexual partners form a pair for the rest of their lives after the first pairing.

Lim and Young injected the cerebrospinal fluid into the brain with the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin and monitored their reaction. Oxytocin had no effect on the male vole, and the female sex immediately attempted to form a relationship with a partner of the opposite sex. But vasopressin acted absolutely differently. Voles of the female sex, on the contrary, did not react to him, and the male sex immediately fell in love.

This experience showed two things at once: how little we know about love and that love, like other emotions, is controlled by chemistry.

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What is love in terms of science

Love is directly related to hormones. They are already familiar from the experiment - oxytocin and vasopressin, as well as dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen and epinephrine. And each of them is responsible for a separate reaction of our body, which we are accustomed to associate with love:

• Adrenaline is responsible for blood pressure, and excessive discharge increases the level of stress and tension, causing the heart to beat more often.
  Dopamine, in turn, is responsible for the sensations that we like so much: pleasure, light dizziness, delight and imaginary wings behind us.
• Serotonin, or rather its lack, is responsible for those cases when we can not throw out the object of adoration from our head. Lack of serotonin is the main symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder when a person can not get rid of obsessive or frightening thoughts.
• Testosterone is responsible for the attractiveness, and, contrary to popular belief, in both sexes. The more testosterone a man has, the more he is attractive to women and the more attractive the women seem to him.
• Estrogen affects the attraction of a man to a woman. A study by the American Psychological Association found that testosterone levels in men who smelled a woman during the period of ovulation increased.

Is it worth it to be ashamed of your feelings and blush at every mention of the genitals in conversation? Hardly. All this is just a set of chemical reactions that occur in our body.

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What you need in order to fall in love

Less than you think. In 1997, psychologist Arthur Aron forced a couple of strangers to fall in love with each other. He gave them a questionnaire with 36 questions, which they had to answer each other within 45 minutes. The level of intimacy grew with every question. And if the first were in the spirit of "Would you like to be famous?", Towards the end, they became like this: "When was the last time you cried before someone? And in private? ".

This is not all. After answering the questions, the couple had to face each other in complete silence for 4 minutes. The strangers who entered the study room through different doors and saw each other for the first time left therefrom in love. And six months later they got married.

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Do we become idiots when we fall in love?

I do not think so. But there are a couple of interesting studies that are worth reading if you are interested in this topic.

In 2009, Sein Knots and her colleagues from the University of Radboud conducted a study, during which they offered men to communicate with beautiful girls. Before and after the conversation, they checked the mental abilities of the subjects.

After talking with girls, the results of mental tests were worse. Surprisingly, it did not work with the female sex: their results did not change.

The second study once again proved the same fact. The essence of the test is to name the color of each word depicted in the picture. But there is one problem: the color of the word does not match its meaning. For example, the word "yellow" is written in red, "blue" - yellow and so on. The test demonstrates how quickly your brain can process this information.

Each group passed the test twice: the first time in the usual way, and during the second test, the participants in the experiment felt that they were being watched by members of the other group. The results were again humiliating male dignity.

The group consisting of men, passed the second test with the worst results. The time spent on the test by the female group was the same in both cases.

Science confirms that love, sex, affection, attraction - all this depends on biology and chemistry. But, despite this, love does not become less beautiful. After all, it's worth it.