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Love really is blind.
(excerpt from the Telegraph)
posted on 3rd February, 2005
Neuroscience finally has the answer to the question, "Is Love Really Blind?" This is a profound finding in the history of our attempts to understand this most profound and powerful human emotion. It means neuroscience finally explains a puzzle that has confused artists from Shakespeare to Sinatra attempting to interpret love. Why is it that we can't see the faults in our partners or children which others can clearly perceive? Why is it that we take so long to finally see the flaws in those we idealise because of our love, and which means we can end up choosing the wrong person to commit to?
The first intriguing finding is that there is a lot of overlap between the brain areas activated during feelings of romantic love for a partner, and those involved in maternal love for own children. The brain cells involved are the same as those we know become active whenever an extremely rewarding activity is being undertaken. These are precisely the same neurological locations which are involved when we consume food and drink we like, take drugs like cocaine, and when we are given monetary rewards. So love is indeed like a drug.
However the key result was that it's not just that certain shared areas of the brain are reliably activated in both romantic and maternal love, but also particular locations are deactivated and it's the deactivation which is perhaps most revealing about love.
Among other areas, parts of the pre-frontal cortex - a bit of the brain towards the front and involved in social judgment - seems to get switched off when we are in love and when we love our children, as do areas linked with the experience of negative emotions such as aggression and fear as well as planning. The parts of the brain deactivated form a network which are involved in the evaluation of trustworthiness of others and basically critical social assessment. In other words, strong emotional ties to another person inhibit not only negative emotions but also affect the brain circuits involved in making social judgments about that person. The results, suggest that attachment involves a push and a pull mechanism - you are pulled along by the strong sense of reward you feel when you love. But you are also pushed by a tendency not to objectively see faults in the other person which might threaten love, or put the brakes on, so preventing you rushing headlong into a relationship, because circuits responsible for critical social assessment and negative emotions are literally switched off. So love really is blind and there is a biological basis for the blindness.
The flaws only become apparent after our initial ardour has cooled, allowing previously suppressed brain areas to awaken to the reality of who we find ourselves with the morning after.
It would seem that one of love's mysteries has at last been cracked by science - if we used our brains to their full capacity all the time and didn't deactivate clear thinking and critical judgment, the species would never have got off the ground.
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