All you need is Love?

I would imagine that most people have to sit through their grandparents reminiscing at length over Sunday lunch. I would imagine too that most people would have heard the story of how their grandparents first met. "..and she's still as beautiful as the first time I saw her..." may have been the point that convinced you that you grandfather had lost it, or could it be that actually he really does think so?

It's nice to start things on positive note and this article seems like a good place.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21208991 (pubmed abstract).

The research here involves 17 people who had all been married over 20years, and showing them pictures of their partners (and people they didn't know as controls) and watching how their brains react using functional MRI. For the lay scientist fMRI is one of the most common imaging techniques. It measures hemodynamic activity in the brain ie. changes in blood flow. It works on the principle that if a part of your brain is working hard, the blood flow to that area increases to meet the increase in demand for oxygen, glucose and other nutritional goodies. In our experiment here, the fMRI allows us to see which areas of the brain light up in the subjects when they are shown pictures of their loved ones. Cool, eh?

The authors have noted quite a few areas of the brain that light up; hypothalamus and hippocampus are two areas you might have heard of. Some of the others, probably not. But hey, the brains pretty complicated. The most interesting area is the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA),  where much of the Dopaminergic nerve cells originate. Ever done something that felt good? Chances are that your VTA was working in overdrive at the time. The VTA sends messages to almost everywhere and it's involved in motivation, addiction and reward (your VTA is why Galaxy Bars just taste so good).

The authors have read other articles that have done the same thing in people who have just fallen in love: the patterns look the same!

What the article is saying is that after 20 years these people are still getting the same sense of happiness when they see their partner as they did when they fell in love. How sweet. 

Nice to know there are people in white coats in NY researching this kind of thing. How interesting. Grandpa will be happy. Oh wait, he already is.

REF:

Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love, Acevedo BP et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neaurosci, 2011 Jan 5th (Epub before print)