Love me with all your heart or not at all”… Sweet words of that sweet old song of yester years. In line with a long tradition which held the heart not only as the “seat”, but even as the “symbol” of love. But, lo and behold, with the passage of time things have changed. New research would have us believe, the ability to love and bond with others, stems from our brains – not from our hearts. The heart acts as a mere cog that pumps blood; it is truly the brain — the thinking part of our body — that controls love and bonding. In recent years, scientists have even uncovered the main brain areas (and even the molecules) involved in the love process.
Cole Porter, the great American composer, in one of his immortal songs asks: “Just who can solve love’s mystery?” But, then, is love really a mystery? Not any longer, say scientists. A novel technique for brain imaging called “functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)” has been providing fantastic insights into the alchemy of love. What is more, it proves the brain’s irrefutable supremacy over the heart – as far as love goes.
Anyone who has been in love, like me, when I was head over heels with my wife-to-be Fernanda (so pretty, so angelic, so charming she was!), can tell you that it is your entire being, all of you, that is affected. Your pulse races, your stomach does flips, your palms sweat, your knees wobble, your breathing becomes erratic, your pupils dilate, hormones surge. You become smitten by the love bug… and it’s wonderful. And to now think that all of that came from the brain (not the heart) leaves me bewildered!
But to be precise, love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love, for instance, is a strong feeling of affection for someone accompanied by sexual attraction. There is also love of humanity, of nature, universal love, karma, platonic, religious and familial love. Woefully inadequate is the singular English word “love” contrasted with the majestic “plurality” of Greek words for love (reflecting the concept’s depth, versatility, and complexity).
Helen Fisher, an expert on the topic, divides love into three partly-overlapping stages: “lust” and “attraction” (both short-lasting) and “attachment” (accounting for long-term relationships). Lust exposes people to others, attraction encourages people to focus their energy on mating, and attachment involves tolerating the spouse long enough to rear a child into infancy or more.
Recent studies in neuroscience indicate that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a set of chemicals, like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. Special areas in our brain have been earmarked for the subtleties of love. The “caudate” and the “ventral tegmental” areas decide why we feel what we feel when we fall in love. By studying MRI brain scans of people newly in love, scientists are learning a lot about the science of love: why love is so powerful, and why being rejected is so horribly painful.
In a group of experiments, Dr Lucy Brown, a professor in the department of neurology and neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, did MRI brain scans on college students who were in the throes of new love. While being scanned, the students looked at a photo of their beloved. The scientists found that the “caudate” area of the brain — which is involved in cravings — became very active. The “ventral tegmental area”, which produces dopamine (a powerful neurotransmitter that affects pleasure and motivation when in love), floods the caudate with dopamine. The caudate then sends signals for more dopamine. “The more dopamine you get, the more of a high you feel,” Brown says.
Functional MRI has further revealed that the key to a 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).
All said, it is clear that the word love which stands for a hodgepodge of feelings and drives, is now under deep scientific scrutiny. Love battles, according to researchers, are always fought within our brains – not within our hearts. A keen tussle goes on between the “puerile reptilian brain”, the “passionate limbic brain” and the “logical neocortex” to decide which one will overtake.
Emotions such as love, hatred, jealousy, anger, etc are controlled by the limbic system, which is a part of the brain. Literally speaking, the heart has nothing to do with love. Heart is a just a basic necessary organ that has got the primary function of pumping blood.
We know now that the heart, being usually associated with love, is the creation of poets and philosophers. Isn’t it time then to rewrite all those valentines, ballads, and romantic poems of old — at least for accuracy’s sake?
And why not re-script the words of that sweet old song too? “Love me with all your brain or not at all”. Oops! Dissecting love under the MRI scanner is already stealing away its romance. La, la, la “that’s amore!”
(Dr Francisco Colaço is a seniormost consulting physician, pioneer of Echocardiography in Goa, column writer, singer and past president of the state IMA)
