Love is more than an emotion (such as joy, sadness or contempt), says Dr Francesco Bianchi Demicelli, a psychiatrist at Geneva University Hospital, it is a “higher function”. In collaboration with Stéphanie Ortigue, researcher at Syracuse University in New York succeeded To reveal the neurological picture of love, that is, the reactions of the brain during emotion.
Science of love
According to scientific studies, love is much more complex than other feelings. Because when a feeling arises, the whole brain becomes excited. The emotional areas are awakened, but in connection with this, the more developed areas of the brain, with the most complex brain processes, are also activated.
So love is not just an emotion, it is much more than that. To conduct the study, Dr. Bianchi Demicelli and her colleague studied the brains of thirty-six women in love, with an average age of 20, based on the Hatfield and Spracher scale. This measurement is able to classify according to various criteria whether someone is passionately in love or in love with a partner who has already cooled down. In the latter case, attachment, bonds of trust and friendship rather than affection dominate.
As reported by Bianchi Demicelli,
We then randomly sent stimuli related to a loved one. Through these stimuli, we can see the activation of certain areas of the brain. We tried the same experiment with words related to our loved ones and the result was the same.
Even with very fast stimulation, even if the person was not clearly perceiving the images, their brain responded bilaterally. By measuring the activation of the cerebral cortex, the researchers showed that a total of 12 regions of the brain begin to work more intensely under the influence of emotion.
the love It is a distributed network in the brain and is a dynamic phenomenon.
Emotion activates the cognitive system (complex language functions and areas of computation), motivation and reward regions, the attention center, self-directed brain regions, and regions involved in an individual’s ability to socialize.
Researchers have also noted that regions associated with fear or aggression are turned off when love is aroused.
Love is a very complex emotion, in which the physiological and psychological sensations of the brain, personal experiences, cultural concepts and experiences rooted in memory also emerge.
In other words, everyone should fall in love immediately, because the feeling has a great effect on the brain, and it also makes us smarter and more beautiful.
(Cover photo: Michel Labini/Getty Images Hungary)
