Archives

« Previous | Most recent | Next »

Might as well face it

Thursday, 19 February 2004 09:17 AM

Cole Porter may have been onto something when he wrote "I Get a Kick Out of You."

"For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. "It is fascinating to reflect", the pair conclude, "that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex." The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. "We are literally addicted to love," Dr Young observes."

Also, from the same issue of The Economist, a Shakespearean sonnet on the theme of love, "Love Makes Voles of Us All."

Permanent link | Categories: General

Copyright © 2004 – 2007 Cynthia Closkey