What's love got to do with it?

It’s often said that every song, every poem, every novel, every painting ever created is in some way about love. Love is often a central theme, an underlying preoccupation in humanity’s greatest works; but what exactly is love? The Western world’s first physician, Hippocrates, proposed in 450 B.C.

that emotions emanate from the brain. He was right, but for the next 2,500 years, science and medicine could offer nothing further about the details of emotional life. Matters of the heart were matters only for the arts – literature, song, poetry, painting, sculpture, dance.



William Shakespeare masterfully composed psychological truisms of that intense, often irrational, human mating drive known as love. He penned expressions that provide insight and savvy into the capricious relationship between love and mind such as: “love is blind, and lovers cannot see”, “to be wise and love exceeds man’s might”, “love looks not with the eyes, but the mind” and, “reason and love keep little company together nowadays.” Science finally had something to say about the anatomy of love in 2005 when Helen E.

Fisher, a biological anthropologist, was able to confirm for the first time that love is hard-wired in our brains. There are regions of the brain associated with early-stage romantic love that form one of the most powerful brain systems humankind has ever evolved. Fisher’s findings landed her a spot as chief science adviser for Match.

com and a mission to answer a question: Why do people fall in love with one person and not another? In response, she developed a questionnaire that separated personalities into categories based on four of the brain’s chemical systems. “The creative and spontaneous traits of the Explorers are connected to the brain’s dopamine system (pleasure and reward). Builders are traditional and cautious – characteristics linked to the serotonin system (regulation of mood, emotion, sleep, appetite).

Directors are analytical, logical, decisive, and tough-minded because of their links to the testosterone system. Negotiators exhibit traits from the estrogen system, such as holistic, long-term, and imaginative thinking,” wrote Richard Sandomir in The New York Times. University of Chicago professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience Stephanie Cacioppo explains that when we’re falling in love with someone, the first thing we notice is how good it feels.

It’s because the brain releases feel-good neurotransmitters that boost our mood. The brain elevates the heart rate, our levels of the so-called love hormone oxytocin are rising, which makes us feel connected. Hormones that make us lose track of time and cause us to flush are spiking.

We might find ourselves eating irregularly or fixating on small details because our levels of serotonin, a key hormone in regulating appetite and intrusive anxious thoughts, decline. Another thing that happens in our bodies when we’re bonding is biobehavioral synchrony, when our behavior and biology begin to mirror those of a social contact. When a mother and infant interact, for instance, their heart rhythms, brain activity and hormone release become matched.

Other studies have found elements of biobehavioral synchrony between romantic partners, friends, and even strangers. Science is telling us that romantic love does not emanate from where thinking occurs in the brain; it does not emanate from the brain regions linked with emotions. It’s based in the brain regions linked with drive, focus, and motivation.

“Romantic love is a drive,” Fisher said. “It’s a basic mating drive that evolved millions of years ago to send your DNA onto tomorrow. and it can overlook just about anything.

” – Kudos to Shakespeare’s “love is blind” admonition. Science has joined the arts to provide insight into the mystery of love, but for behaviors like falling in love, we simply have no real control over them. “I think that when somebody says, ‘You are the one,’ it’s not because you decided you’re going to fall in love with that person, but that there was an attraction that you acted upon, and it’s that attraction that is somewhat outside of our control,” observed Tom Sherman, a professor at Georgetown’s School of Medicine.

In trying to figure out “What’s love got to do with it?” love reveals it is not something that can be controlled, curated or switched on or off. Love may arise from the depths of our subconscious brain through a complex series of computations that gives us an emotional experience we can’t control. However, the quest to understand love ultimately involves more than unravelling its evolutionary roots or unpacking how the brain orchestrates a medley of chemical and behavioral responses designed to continue our existence.

A comment in an online forum struck me as really getting to the heart of the matter: “If you love with the heart, you will lose your mind. If you love with the mind, you will lose your heart.” Dr.

William Kolbe, an Andover resident, is a retired high school and college teacher and former Peace Corps volunteer in Tonga and El Salvador. He can be reached at bila.kolbe9@gmail.

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