According to a study released last year, love isn't about emotion at all - it's not even about sex. A team of scientists studying the living brain has used real time MRI brain images of people in the initial throes of passion to determine that love originates far from the brain's logic center, emotional nexus and centers of desire. It comes from the same place as drug addiction!
"There's this general craving-and-desire system that's engaged, only in this case the desire isn't for money or a drug or power or freedom. The desire is for merging with another person," co-researcher Arthur Aron, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook explains.
"Furthermore, the neural systems engaged by sex and love are really quite distinct," he added. "This is really the first unambiguous evidence that they really are separate systems."
This, according to Aron, explains why people fall in love with people they aren't even sexually attracted to or why others can feel equally strong, sudden emotion for a newborn child or even God.
Based on the evidence linked to the body's dopaminergic impulses (which are associated with elation, energy, craving and motivation), a researcher told the Journal of Neurophysiology "we feel now that romantic love is a drive, not an emotion. It's a basic mating drive."
Emotion, it seems, doesn't get involved until new love grows old. After eight months, researchers detected activity in the regions of the brain associated with emotion.
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