Study: Romantic love affects brain like drug addiction

Study: Romantic love affects brain like drug addiction

It's a dance between logic and impulse, lead and follow

01:13 PM CDT on Tuesday, September 4, 2007

By SUSAN BRINK / Los Angeles Times

[Click image for a larger version] CARLOS CHAVEZ/Los Angeles Times
CARLOS CHAVEZ/Los Angeles Times
'Chemistry is more than just being hot or handsome,' says Gian Gonzaga, a senior research scientist at eHarmony Labs.

Her front brain is telling her he's trouble. Look at the facts, it says. He's never made a commitment, he can't keep a job.

But her middle brain won't listen. Man, it swoons, he looks great in those jeans, his black hair curls onto his forehead so adorably. His front brain is lecturing, too: She's flirting with every guy, and she can drink you under the table, it says. His mid-brain is unresponsive, distracted by her come-hither stare.

"What could you be thinking?" their front brains demand.

Their middle brains, each on a quest for reward, pay no heed.
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Alas, when it comes to choosing mates, smart neurons can make dumb choices.

And so begins the dance of attraction, infatuation and, ultimately, love.

Mystery for the ages

It's a dance that holds many mysteries.

It was only in 2000 that two London scientists selected 70 people, all in the early sizzle of love, and rolled them into the giant cylinder of a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, or FMRI.

The pictures were a revelation, and others have followed, showing that romantic love is a lot like addiction to alcohol or drugs. Yet the chemistry between two people isn't just a matter of molecules. Attraction also involves personal history. "Our parents have an effect on us," says Helen Fisher, evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University. "So does the school system, television, timing, mystery."

The dance that leads to a stable commitment moves through several steps.

First comes initial attraction. Next comes the wild infatuation of romance. The brain uses its chemical arsenal to focus our attention on one person.

"Everyone knows what that feels like. This is one of the great mysteries. It's the Love Potion No. 9, the click factor, interpersonal chemistry," says Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientist at eHarmony Labs.

After that, says relationship researcher Arthur Aron, psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, something more stable takes over: the steady pair-bonding of what's called companionate love.

That initial spark can flash and fade. Or it can become a flame and then a fire, a rush of exhilaration and sense of union that scientists know as passionate love.

Key to this state of seeing a person as a soul mate instead of a one-night stand is the limbic system, nestled deep within the brain between the neocortex (the region responsible for reason and intellect) and the reptilian brain (responsible for primitive instincts). Altered levels of dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin – neurotransmitters also associated with arousal – wield influence.

But passionate love is also "a drive to win life's greatest prize, the right mating partner," Dr. Fisher says. It is, she says, an addiction.

People in the early throes of passionate love, she says, can think of little else. They describe sleeplessness, loss of appetite and feelings of euphoria, and they're willing to take exceptional risks. Brain areas governing reward, obsession, recklessness and habit all play their part in the trickery.

In an experiment published in the 2006 book Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience, Dr. Fisher found 17 people who were in relationships for an average of seven months. All said they'd feel deep despair if their lover left, and they yearned to know all there was to know about the loved one.

She put them in an FMRI to see what areas of their brains got active when they saw a photograph of their beloved ones.

"We saw activity in the ventral tegmental area and other regions of the brain's reward system associated with motivation, elation and focused attention," she said. It's the same part of the brain that presumably is active when gamblers think they're going to win.

"At that point, you really wouldn't notice if he had three heads," Dr. Fisher says. "Or you'd notice, but you'd choose to overlook it."

More research

Lucy Brown, professor of neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has also taken FMRI images of people in the early days of a new love. In a study reported in the July 2005 Journal of Neurophysiology, she too found key activity in the ventral tegmental area. "That's the area that's also active when a cocaine addict gets an IV injection of cocaine," Dr. Brown says. "It's not a craving. It's a high."

Biologically, the cravings and pleasures unleashed are as strong as any drug. Certain brain regions, scientists have found, are being deactivated, such as within the amygdala, associated with fear. Excited brain messages reach the caudate nucleus, a dopamine-rich area where unconscious habits and skills, such as the ability to ride a bike, are stored.

The attraction signal turns the love object into a habit, and then an obsession. According to a 1999 study in the journal Psychological Medicine, people newly in love have serotonin levels 40 percent lower than normal people do – just like people with obsessive-compulsive disorders.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER

Beyond the chemistry of passion and romance lies the hope of happily ever after.

Researchers call this state companionate love, the kind of love people feel after years of arguments, joy, tragedies and successes mutually felt. To arrive there, couples have to get on the road to success pretty quickly. About a third of divorces occur after just four years of marriage, according to Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, psychologist at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

Here are success tips from relationship experts, based on surveys of couples in lasting relationships.

•They kid themselves a bit. For example, they typically underestimate their partners' interest in others. "If you show people pictures of attractive men and women and ask how their partner will look at this person, they underestimate the person's attractiveness to their partner," says Gian Gonzaga, senior research scientist at eHarmony Labs. "It turns out that's actually good, because we're not constantly worrying and obsessing."

•They don't update images of each other. "People stick with their initial view," says Mr. Gonzaga. "As people get older, they get less attractive, but we don't update."

•They have a matching story profile, and they stick to it. Robert Sternberg, dean of the school of arts and science at Tufts University, describes the "fairy tale story" with a prince and a princess; the "travel story," which says that life is a journey; the "war story," where both expect constant fights. "What our research shows is that couples tend to be more satisfied if they have matching story profiles," Dr. Sternberg says.

Source:
Study: Romantic love affects brain like drug addiction | Dallas Morning News |

World's Tallest Man Marries In Mongolia

By Kitty Bu in Erdos, China

July 12, 2007 07:17pm

THE world's tallest man married a woman two-thirds his size and almost half his age today in a traditional Mongolian ceremony sponsored by at least 15 companies hoping to cash in on his fame.

Bao Xishun, 56, a 2.36m herdsman from China's vast Inner Mongolia region, was carried to his wedding on the back of a mobile yurt pulled by camels at the Genghis Khan holiday resort on the grasslands near Erdos city.

Hundreds of people, some travelling for hours, turned up to see Mr Bao wed saleswoman Xia Shujuan, a mere 1.68m tall and just 29 years old.

Draped in a shimmering blue silk coat, Mr Bao waved to the crowd before going into an enormous yurt where guests ate lamb and cheese and watched Mongolian song and dance shows.

"If we can have children, we'll have children," Mr Bao said before the wedding. "If not, then not. If we have a child, I hope he or she can be 1.8-1.9m tall. Then he or she can play basketball."

Ms Xia said she was madly in love.

"You need to have feelings for someone to be in love. Even if he is a big shot, you can't love him without feelings," Ms Xia said.

Mr Bao was confirmed as the world's tallest living man by Guinness World Records last year.

He overtook the previous holder, Radhouane Charbib of Tunisia, by just 2 mm.

The Guinness World Records says Mr Bao was of normal height until 16 but then put on a spurt that doctors were unable to explain, reaching his full height in seven years.

He put out marriage advertisements around the world, but ended up wedding somebody from his home town, Chifeng.

Mr Bao and his wife were legally married in March, but wanted to also have an authentic Mongolian ceremony.

After a career in the army, where he was recruited for a basketball team, he returned to Inner Mongolia. He now herds livestock and hires himself out for publicity stunts.

In December, Bao saved the lives of two dolphins by reaching deep into their stomachs with his 1.06-metre long arm to pull out pieces of plastic, according to Chinese media.

Because of his fame, Inner Mongolia decided to turn the wedding into a branding event.

"He has a very good image among us in Inner Mongolia," said Bao's agent, Xin Xing. "We plan to use his name as a brand to develop tourism. We want to better help and serve our hometown."

Everything from the liquor drunk at the wedding to the shoes Bao wore were sponsored by a different company.

Source: Adelaide Advertiser

Romance in the redwoods: Big Basin offers risque tour

February 25, 2007

Romance in the redwoods: Big Basin offers risque tour
By ROGER SIDEMAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

Volunteer naturalist Arlene Herring has been visiting the forest at Big Basin State Park since she was a kid. But the tour she gave recently was not the G-rated fare of her childhood.

Springtime is just around the bend in the forest and the lengthening days exert their force, ending hibernation, inciting growth — and exciting lust.

"Who wants the kinky stuff? If you don't, you better close your ears," Herring said before launching into a lesson about banana slug sex.

Among the things Herring shared on her "Romance in the Redwoods" guided walk: male and female banana slugs both have a well-endowed "sperm plug" and sometimes lunge at each other and bite like snakes; female newts choose their mates as they're surrounded by mosh pits of competing males called "newt balls;" some acorn woodpeckers don't breed, choosing instead to assist others in courtship rituals.

When Herring asked if anyone in the group knows what a hermaphrodite is, Peter Ely Jr. chuckled.

"It means they can get into some pretty wicked marital disputes," he said.

People naturally have a fascination with animals and are curious about their sexual behavior, Herring said. That's because while humans turn anxiously to books, magazines or therapists for sex tips, animals are guided only by instinct.

Although statistics about woodpecker love may not prove useful for humans in the dating scene, the tour exposed certain parallels between animal and human courtship: male crickets offering protein-rich food to females [pre-nuptial gifts], bird calls echoing through the forest [wooing with song], bees encircling females in ritual movements [dance], and birds like peacocks and barn swallows showing their fancy plumage [boasting color and ornamentation].

The rituals are not too unlike those at a traditional Indian wedding, remarked Ashwin and Arundhati Naik, visiting from Bangalore, India.

The sex tour was mostly all talk and no action. Without any animal specimens in sight, Herring employed the redwoods to put a new spin on old-fashioned storytelling.

"The Maddock family, the earliest homesteaders in these redwoods, probably found that in the winter, they had a lot of time on their hands and needed to keep busy. They had eight kids!" she said.

Tracing the origins of Valentine's Day back to ancient Rome, Herring described an ancient fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the god of agriculture.

"Look around you," she told the group. "At 2,200 years old, some of the trees you see today at Big Basin were sprouting up when those Romans were giving their version of cards and candy hearts to each other"

Despite some of the blunt talk on the tour, many in the weekend crowd were coy about their reasons for attending.

"We just wanted to see the redwoods. This is our first time, and this tour happened to be starting when we arrived," said Ashwin Naik.

Another participant, a local resident too embarrassed to give her name, said her interest was all about simple biology and the enjoyment of learning about the environment in all its forms.

Lover's letter arrives - 92 years after it was mailed.

Lover's letter arrives after death

From correspondents in London

February 18, 2007 12:00am
Article from: The Sunday Telegraph

A POSTCARD sent from the trenches during World War I by a soldier to his sweetheart at home finally arrived last week - 92 years after he sent it.

Private Walter Butler wrote to Amy Hicks in 1915, telling her he was alive and well – but the army-issue postcard never made it to her home in Wiltshire.

Mr Butler survived the war, and the couple went on to marry and have children.

The postcard turned up in a postal sorting office, which sent it along last week to the post office near Ms Hicks' address, from where it was delivered to the late couple's daughter – 86-year-old grandmother Joyce Hulbert.

Source: Lover's letter arrives after death | NEWS.com.au

AdelaideNow... Vasectomy linked to Dementia

Vasectomy linked to Dementia

February 15, 2007 10:38am
Article from: Reuters

MEN who have had a vasectomy may face an increased risk of developing a rare type of dementia marked by a steady loss of language skills, researchers say.
Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois, writing in the journal Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology, link the sterilisation surgery to a neurological condition called primary progressive aphasia, or PPA.

Preliminary data also linked vasectomies to another form of dementia involving behavioural changes.

Sandra Weintraub, who led the study, says her findings should not stop men from getting vasectomies.

Source: Adelaide Advertiser AdelaideNow... Vasectomy linked to Dementia

Photo in the News: Skeleton "Valentines" Won't Be Parted

February 13, 2007—In what's been called a Valentine's Day gift to Italy, archaeologists today excavated two interlocked Stone Age skeletons—leaving their "eternal embrace" intact and making it easier to analyze the double burial.

Discovered last week during construction not far from Verona, the setting of Romeo and Juliet, the roughly 5,000-year-old couple has already become an icon of enduring love to many.

Like Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, the prehistoric twosome appear to be young, as evidenced by the condition of their teeth. But that's about all that is known about them so far. They could just as easily be two brothers.

But dig supervisor Elena Menotti takes the romantic view.

"It was a very emotional discovery," the archaeologist told the Associated Press last week. "From thousands of years ago we feel the strength of this love. Yes, we must call it love."

—Ted Chamberlain

Source: Photo in the News: Skeleton "Valentines" Won't Be Parted

Decorate your home with love

Decorate your home with love

By Missy Baxter
Special to The Courier-Journal

We've all heard the adage: "It takes two to tango." But finding a compatible dance partner isn't the only key to keeping romance alive.

Creating a sensual setting is also vital in making hearts race. Whether it's fluffy pillows and floral prints in a French-style boudoir or artistic sculptures and unique candlesticks in a lavishly hip living room, the décor you select can have a major impact on your mood.

"Our surroundings have an immense impact on how we view ourselves and how we live our lives," said New Albany, Ind., interior decorator Grace Rieger, owner of Signature Interiors by GZ.

"There are a lot of inexpensive ways to create a romantic atmosphere. You can do simple things like using small lamps or candles, instead of overhead lighting, to create the right ambience."

Requests for rooms with a romantic feeling have increased in recent years among clients in the Louisville area, Rieger said.

"For people with hectic lives, their home has become their vacation destination," she said. "Part of that feeling is to create areas with a dreamy feeling, a place to escape from it all.

You don't have to redecorate the entire room to make it romantic, Rieger notes. "You can just add a few colorful accessories, such as pillows, candles or flowers that match your color scheme."
Turn up heat with color

When it comes to romance, red and pink aren't the only colors to use for setting that special mood, according to decorators and designers. Pink hearts and red roses are no longer the only indicators that romance is in the air. Trends include incorporating vivid hues, such as tangerine and mango.

"Color sets the mood," Rieger said. "Bright, bold colors, such as shades of orange or yellow, definitely add warmth and coziness."

Like Rieger, designers across the country are using bold tones to set the right mood in a room, said Jason Mulvene, owner of Blue Ocean Traders, a Louisville home decor and furnishings wholesaler whose clients include some of the top interior decorators and designers in the country.

"With the Asian and European influences that are proving so popular in the past few years, the designers who buy from us are definitely incorporating a lot of bold color choices, especially in rooms where they want a romantic atmosphere," Mulvene said.
Simple changes

As winter fades into spring, color becomes an integral part of that transition.

"As the season's change, so do the rooms in our homes with accents and details that come with a holiday, a special event or simply for the need for change," said celebrity designer Stephen Saint-Onge.

"These changes, such as new artwork, new lighting or a simple bunch of flowers can allow the feel of the rooms to seem more inspired -- yet you have not done a major renovation or in most cases spent a ton of money.

"In doing these simple changes yourself, you realize that it does affect your attitude and your mood. You realize that you have the power to shift your perspective and create a new vision for your space ... and in essence that life that you lead in those spaces."
Lights, candles, action!

Saint-Onge, a spokesman for HomeGoods (www.homegoods.com) and a frequent guest on "The View" and "The Oprah Winfrey Show," suggests that homeowners focus on lighting to set a tranquil, sensual setting.

"I think having overhead lights and table lamps on dimmers allows you to have creative control over the feel of the spaces," he said.

"If you're working, you may want lights up, but if you are eating or relaxing with your family or that special someone, you can dim them and things get transformed instantly into something relaxing and peaceful."

Soothing music is another mood-elevator, according to Saint-Onge.

"Dim the lights, light the candles and play some nice music leading into watching a romantic movie," he said. "That sounds like the perfect romantic night to me."
The finishing touches

When transforming a room into an amorous haven, it's crucial to select accessories that add flair and convey a sense of the homeowner's personality.

"The room's lighting, temperature and scent, along with details like the decor and accessories, are essential in creating that sensual mood," said Marisa Belger, executive editor of Tango magazine.

"At Tango, we offer smart talk about love and one of the things we've discovered is that the atmosphere inside our home is very important to the development of happy, fulfilling relationships."

Unique artwork is one way to incorporate a sense of whimsy and playfulness.

"Accessories, such as art, are the ultimate final touch," said designer Kristi Lynn, who recently created a line of sensual statues for Texture Home Decor.

Known as Lovely Ladies, the statues feature dancers in various poses.

"Intrigued by the human figure and its organic curves, the statues were inspired by the sensuality of the tango," Lynn said. "When the tango dancers are added to a room, my hopes are that the homeowner will be reminded of the romantic tension of the tango, and be filled with the giddiness that the tango so magically creates."

Lynn said the dancing statue designs were prompted by fond memories.

"The tango was always my favorite type of dance because whenever I see it done, it's like the world melts away and it's just the two dancers lost in each other," she said. "I heard it expressed perfectly once, 'Dancing is the vertical expression of a lateral desire.' "

Source: Decorate your home with love