Brain Takes Less Than Second to Fall in Love.

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The_Face_of_Boo
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17 Nov 2010, 2:15 pm

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A recent study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to see how love affects the brain. Its calculations of love has attracted plenty of attention.

For example, the time taken to "fall in love" clocks in at about one-fifth of a second, not the six months of romantic dinners and sharing secrets some might expect.

Also, 12 areas of the brain work together during the love process, releasing euphoria-inducing chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopressin. Love's high is similar to cocaine's rush.

Love influences sophisticated intellectual processes of the brain too. When a person feels in love, their mental representation, metaphors and even body image are also affected.

Researchers from Syracuse University, West Virginia University and the Geneva University Psychiatric Center retrospectively reviewed pertinent neuroimaging literature. They published their findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Overall, they found, love is really good for you.

Couples who had just fallen in love had significantly higher levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF. NGF is crucial to the survival of sympathetic and sensory neurons. Some believe NGF can reduce neural degeneration. Not a bad side effect.

Just as love is diverse, the part of the brain affected is also different.

Unconditional love, the type often seen between a mother and child, lights up the common and different brain areas, including the middle of the brain.

Not surprisingly, passionate love fires the reward part of the brain, but it also affects the higher-order cognitive function seen in body image.

A follow-up study about the speed of love in the human brain is expected to follow soon.

Photo: Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss" (1908) credit: AP Photo/Belvedere Vienna

http://news.discovery.com/human/brain-t ... -love.html

emlion
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17 Nov 2010, 2:17 pm

Cool.

alexptrans
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17 Nov 2010, 2:23 pm

I can't imagine for the life of me how this study was conducted. Did they have people hooked up to electrodes, followed them around in their daily lives, and registered their responses to random people they encountered? Also, how did they differentiate between love/crush/like?

Moog
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17 Nov 2010, 2:35 pm

I can believe it.

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TallyMan
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17 Nov 2010, 2:45 pm

alexptrans wrote:

According to the quote they used magnetic resonance imaging. In other words they were inside one of those huge medical scanning contraptions. Sounds kinda difficult to squeeze someone in there with you who you might fall in love with. Though I suppose the limited space would make it more intimate and more likely to lead to such feelings. :wink:

alexptrans
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17 Nov 2010, 2:59 pm

TallyMan wrote:

LOL. Sure, sounds like a perfectly natural setting for falling in love. Right up there with moonlit walks on the beach.

ToadOfSteel
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17 Nov 2010, 3:31 pm

alexptrans wrote:

I have a feeling it has to do with lust and physical attraction more than anything. If someone said "it takes 1/5 of a second to become physically attracted to someone", I'd believe that in 1/5 of a second. But true connections of relationship aren't formed that quickly, and someone that was initially attracted to you can be turned off with relative ease at this point if you **** it up...

Asp-Z
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17 Nov 2010, 3:46 pm

Makes sense.

On the flip side, I've read a few articles which detail how - for many of the same scientific reasons this study cites - break ups can literally kill you.

Kaybee
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17 Nov 2010, 5:13 pm

Interesting article, but I'm with alexptrans and ToadofSteal. There is no way they could have measured a person falling in love in this sort of setting. They talk about the unconditional love experienced by mothers--were these women in MRI machines when they popped their kids out? They mention passionate love--were these people in the MRI machines when they met their partners?

They could have examined the brains of people experiencing love. They could have measured a person becoming attracted to another person. They couldn't have measured a person falling in/first forming love.

As for the findings (the brain falls in love in less than a second), I can believe it. I don't believe you can fall in love with a person within one-fifth of a second of knowing them, but I'd imagine it goes something along the lines of "9:52 and 12 seconds PM - like and care for the person, but not in love," "9:52 and 13 seconds PM - in love."

Still an interesting read, though. Thanks for sharing.

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Mindslave
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17 Nov 2010, 5:37 pm

This doesn't surprise me. Of course, depending on your definition of love, you might not agree with the study. I learned a while back that it takes girls about 5 minutes to decide if they like you, and if they don't like you, you can never be more than just a friend. Many times, the jury is still out upon first meeting someone, but sometimes, you meet someone, and you just click. People put love up on a pedestal, as if it's this mystical feelings from the heavens above. It's not that complicated really, but it is if you make it that way.

hale_bopp
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17 Nov 2010, 5:51 pm

This doesn't surprise me. After all, i've described falling for someone like being hit in the face with a frying pan, it doesn't gradually hit you, its instant.

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17 Nov 2010, 5:56 pm

Usually, or I should say, when it does happen, It tends to happen quick, but then it takes me ages to work out that it happened. It's like my brain takes a long time to catch up with that instant reaction.

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ToadOfSteel
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17 Nov 2010, 5:59 pm

Kaybee wrote:

As for the findings (the brain falls in love in less than a second), I can believe it. I don't believe you can fall in love with a person within one-fifth of a second of knowing them, but I'd imagine it goes something along the lines of "9:52 and 12 seconds PM - like and care for the person, but not in love," "9:52 and 13 seconds PM - in love."

Hmm... now that makes sense... like all of a sudden something switches on and you're feeling in love. But there's no way you decide within 1/5 of a second of meeting someone as to whether you're in love with that person or not...

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17 Nov 2010, 5:59 pm

Kaybee wrote:

I wondered the same thing. What exactly did they measure. I clicked on the link to find out. Face of Boo quoted the article in full but the anwer is in a mildly annoyed comment in the comment section. The poster was already familiar with the research and grumpily said that the article came to the wrong conclusion. Apparently what actually gets measured when a person is in the machine is how long it takes for their brain to react and which regions react when a person is shown a picture or hears a voice recording of their loved one. It takes a person one fifth of a second to measurably react to the photo or recorded voice of their loved one. This reaction time is what they were measuring. They were not measuring how long it takes to fall in love because, as everybody here has noted, nobody is in a machine when that happens.

Whoever wrote the article catastrophically misunderstood the research.

ToadOfSteel
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17 Nov 2010, 6:01 pm

Janissy wrote:

Ah, that also makes sense too... 1/5 of a second is normal for certain reaction times...

The_Face_of_Boo
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17 Nov 2010, 6:01 pm

they're probably measuring 'lust'.

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