Love in the Age of Science

I enjoy all kinds of blogs. Here's a bit from a posting by Jennifer Ouellette on the Cocktail Party Physics site. This is good advice and good science:

Back in 2004, Forbes reported on the work of Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki, who claimed to have produced the first fMRI images of your brain on love. There is still some skepticism about their work; Caltech neuroscientist John Allman, for instance, cautions in the article about the difficulties of distinguishing between love and lust on fMRI scans, although Bartels argues his scans are markedly different from the areas of the brain activated when subjects are, say, watching pornography.

In fact, he's compared his fMRI images of people in love to those of mothers looking at their infants, and found the scans were almost identical -- except in the former case, there was extra activity in the hypothalamus, which is linked to sexual arousal. The reward center of the brain lights up when we're in love (winning the lottery produces the same effect), but what's really interesting is which regions get turned off: those commonly associated with things like moral judgement. Apparently love really is blind, and Bartels has the fMRI images to prove it:

[view the blog posting to see the picture!]

The study of love continues apace. According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, there's a new study by Bianca Acevedo (a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara) that suggests one bit of conventional wisdom isn't true: the notion that after the first flush of romantic excitement wears off, partners settle into a less intense, more companionable relationship that is far less thrilling than the infatuation phase. Acevedo says this isn't the case for roughly 30% of US married couples. She looked at brain scans of couples married 20 years or so and still claimed to be in love -- and they showed the exact same neural activity as newlyweds, "only without the anxiety or obsession." I've only been married to the Spousal Unit for 2-1/2 years, so things are early yet, but one of (many) reasons I married him was the same lack of anxiety or obsession -- without sacrificing the excitement of being in love. It's a rare gift.

Oh... and I love the recommendation of a book that I truly enjoyed:

And speaking of sex, what Valentine's Day post would be complete without Mary Roach, author of Bonk, giving a TED talk about the 10 weirdest things you don't know about orgasms? Bonk ranks as one of the best popular science books ever written, in my opinion, because in addition to some truly fascinating science, Roach approaches her subject with good humor. (I especially like the bit about the woman who experienced orgasm every time she brushed her teeth: "You'd think this woman would have excellent oral hygiene," Roach wryly comments, but apparently not: the poor woman assumed she must be demon-possessed.)