Why people don’t accept love as it is, full of agonies and extasies, a misterious force that keeps the universe together?
But no, even for love there is a need for explanations….
According to a study in the recent issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, people who “fall in love at first sight” do so in a fifth of a second.
The researchers say the feeling is the same sort of sensation that one gets from using cocaine.
Below, an edited transcript of Science2.0 post:
Do you fall in love using your heart or your brain?
It depends. For your brain – says a new analysis by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue – falling in love elicits the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but it also affects intellectual areas of the brain. That’s a pretty big endorsement of the brain being number one in romance.
So if love is in the brain and not the heart, is there ‘love at first sight’ after all?
The science says yes, according to the researchers, who found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second.
The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image, which may explain why peoples’ abilities and behaviors are all over the psychology map when they are in a new relationship.
The findings have interest for neuroscience and mental health research because when relationships don’t work out, it can be a significant cause of emotional stress and depression. “It’s another probe into the brain and into the mind of a patient,” says Ortigue. “By understanding why they fall in love and why they are so heartbroken, they can use new therapies.”
The study also shows different parts of the brain fall for love. For example, unconditional love, such as that between a mother and a child, is sparked by the common and different brain areas, including the middle of the brain. Passionate love is sparked by the reward part of the brain, and also associative cognitive brain areas that have higher-order cognitive functions, such as body image.
So, seriously, does your heart fall in love or the brain?
“That’s a tricky question always,” says Ortigue. “I would say the brain, but the heart is also related because the complex concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa. For instance, activation in some parts of the brain can generate stimulations to the heart, butterflies in the stomach. Some symptoms we sometimes feel as a manifestation of the heart may sometimes be coming from the brain.”
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I used to believe in love and I agree when the scientists say that falling in love takes just 1/5 seconds. For example I met this guy one year ago and I didn’t know anything about him but when I saw his face…wow I can’t even explain how I felt. The time stopped and it was like if I had never seen a boy before!!! I think this is love, and I think that these feelings are relate with brain and with blood. Our brain send a strange and inexplicable message through the veins and it arrive in our heart! That’s why it starts beating faster and we feel butterflies in our stomach. This is just an illusion from the brain!!!!!
love for me is a mixed emotions of different kind but i really appreciate love because without love i am nothing…so love,love,love…….
Sir, Need ur help – honestly. Divorce, relationships, parental relationship problems, job issues, lost d self-respect, heavy depression since yrs, whereas i am a psychologist. Yes, i really bliv in ur thots with convictoin. Lost the meaning/purpose to live. I am finding it too difficult to jusdge people and be with any1. Its been 14-15 yrs – no solution. Tried approaching u since long.!!!! plz reply….sir, polite request.
i think jealous will always be a symptom of love which starts with first sight
absolutely
Its like there’s a guy.. n i have been crushing on him from the past 1 n a half year.. i have never told it to him.. but i wanna know that is it really love for i cannot help liking him n every guy i see i ask myself the same question oh no he’s not like ********… but at the same time i get way too jealous if someone praises him.. like teachers.. i dun get jealous of the person who is praising him but ‘him’ .. is it love or just a strong crush? :S.. n whenever i see him i turn away and act as if i dun even know him coz i hate it taht he thinks that i like him coz i dun want him to know that i like him n in return not like but hate me.. plz anyone help!
(P.S. i consider him my prince charming like totally perfect)
how to know weather u really love somebody??
Hi Marif
You just know. I knew the very second my husband spoke to me, I would love him for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, he was unfaithful and we are divorced, but part of me will always love him as much as the day we met. x
Dear Sir Paulo Coelho:
I am Jennifer Rachel, from the Philippines, and I have followed you ever since I saw your page on FB. Let me please share with you a short prose that I wrote regarding “LOVE”. (For the readers: please note that even if this is an unpublished prose, no part or whole of my prose may be copied or printed anywhere else without my express permission because I completely own the prose. Thank you.)
“WHAT IS LOVE?”
What is love? How do you define a concept that is sublime and heavenly in its purpose but dictated upon by human, earthly emotions and feelings? How do you measure the love that you have for a person? Is there such a thing as loving a person too much or not loving someone enough?
In our never-ending quest to define this unexplainable idea — this elusive thought — we try so hard to give words to the feelings…to render prose and music to something undefinable…to catch and cage something that chooses when, where, and whom to rest and honor with an emotion that is as powerful and free and deep as our soul itself.
Why are we — mere mortals — not content to just feel honored if such a superior feeling chooses to rest in our poor, lowly souls? Why do we try so hard to define, catch, and box something that should never be analyzed but just savored?
In the final analysis, we learn that love should not be explained but felt…should not be captured but just enjoyed…should never be broken down and dissected, but rather just appreciated and revered. Love is a choice…Love is an honor…Love is sublime…Love — is simply love.
this is good writing .i love the way the concept of love is in your mind and the way you put into words.
1/5 of a second… wow! Finally, scientific evidence shreds any doubt whether or not it is possible to fall in love with numerous beautiful women in the time it takes to finish of one beer at the local pub. LOL
Err… barman, one more beer please :-) ROFL
Only kidding…
Seriously thought, at the risk of sounding a bit like Confuscious, IMHO… Love is fully describable, rational and logical only to those who have never truly experienced it.
My wish to you is that you experience it in all its glory…
Yo creo que todo es pura quimica,accion y reaccion,a veces hay atraccion y otras repulsion..como las particulas del atomo,nos sentimos profundamente atraidos y tbien a veces repelidos.Algun dia todo tendra una explicacion cientifica..es cuestion de tiempo.
Es evidente a diario que muchas personas “se enamoran a priera vista” (los científicos lo llaman atracción, provocada por dopaminas, testosteronas,oxitocina,etc.). Platón lo considera como el encuentro de la media naranja. Como no se puede dar téstimonio de lo que no se a vivido, soy imparcial en responder si existe o no el a priera vista, pero lo que sé es que el cerebro no controla las emociones y sentimientos (aunque debo de admitir que si sabe reeprimirlos), que Dios es El único que puede decir que se esconde en el corazón de una persona. El ser humano siempre se obstina por entender lo inentendible y acuesta de ello crea falsas soluciones fundamentandose en hechos que no conprueban más que la deficiencia de responsabilidad en algunos. Dios es amor!!
I think people are using “the heart” scientifically defining it as the muscle that pumps blood to your body. It being near the center of our body we have some how attributed it with this “heart” that is responsible for feelings of love. I think better to site ones soul/being (the sum total of everything that we are seen and unseen) as being responsible for falling in love.
After all why separate the heart from the brain, physically they don’t work one with out the other. Why should they do so emotionally.
I agree with you, Gabriel. The heart has always been associated with the feeling of love. We can attribute holidays like Valentine’s Day to that. I think all emotion is controlled by the brain…any time our heart races it’s because the brain (the hypothalamus, I think) causes one to release adrenaline – whether for a positive emotion or a negetive one. Te heart merely quicken in response to this chemical release. Tha may be another reason why we associate the heart with feelings of love. The heart does race at the prospect of love, in the throws of love, in the after effect of love, even after it has left us. And when that adrenaline is released, we feel our hearts race, thus, the association.
brain—-(mind) easily gives up,but you cannot cheat your heart <3 <3
true. everytime i try to think of a reason to give up on something, it is my heart that keep pushing me to go and try again and again.. and the cycle always repeat itself..i hate it sometimes, but you cannot cheat your heart =P
Science is not that developed to analyse love for that matter any emotions. It is better remain unexplained by science , otherwise the purity of feelings will start getting manipulated.
inspiring yet informative…
Its true wen u loose ur love
v dont understand y n how
smoke gets into our eyes
leavin our heart vt burns n ashes
the marks are so deep n everlasting
filled vt the thoughts of ur love overcasting
but still v move on vt new hope
tough hard to be found
coz luv is lost but lifes still there
dont get stuck to loose our place on this ground.
fallin in love takes within that part of a second . for few people who love so deeply sumtimes to come out of it takes a long time may be a life time to forget that person whom v love . its hard to enter a new relationship even if v enter its hard to hold on coz v r lost in that love . love is really a mysterious thing cannot be explained by sciences or logic . its beyond its reach to explain . either v live in love longing 4 it . it is more psychological
el amor o enamoramiento…..k palabra mas bella y a la vez tan maldita,creemos que es una bendicion,una alegria,una estabilidad,y cuando va pasando el tiempo se seca,como una flor marchita,como cuando cae el sol y todo oscurece, y esperamos a k salga el sol, pero tarda mucho, demasiado, vamos en busca de otra flor de otro sol….de otra vida y cuando te das cuenta ……todo se marchita con el tiempo.ahi k disfrutar de los momentos enque todo parece ser todo lo contrario a la realidad
There is this circulating story where a guy had undergone a heart transplant… He had a wife…after the transplant he still loved her… So its the brain responsible for emotions…
..or 1/8 to stop.(Wisniewski,Domagalik “188 dni i nocy.”)
Love at first sight cannot be or never,explained.
It needs to be experienced to be understood; it is way beyond one’s understanding….
Did my heart or brain work?
I wanted my head to work and it did so, but failed miserably.My heart bled, and my brains wept every time, I could not be with my Love…
THAT’S why it stays a mystery. Why do we have to explain it anyway? It is both the brain AND the heart that are responding. But there is a difference in love. You can love someone so deeply, that it effects your whole being. If you experience a spiritual love, it feels like your heart and soul is literly connected to the other person. You think the same way, say the same things at the same time and feel that you are deeply connected somehow…Why, you don’t know, you just feel it. You long to be together almost in an obsessive way… When you experience this, you know its a divine thing and a “higher force” is working for you. accept this as a gift and cherish it as long as you can..
Dear, Paulo.
I am from Brazil. First time here.
I think that many people – maybe – are not prepareted to acept love, when it happends. See, I am brazilian as you. I´m travelling many countries as you. And is quite curious to notice how love at the same time is different and similar everywhere. There is in fact, those who acept love in the right beggining. But there is those who fight against love and real trully emotions they hole life. People who get married with people that they don´t really love. For any reason. That´s why the industries of divorce grows so much on the last years. With many unhappy people in love. That´s why also we have many grow up 40, 50th men finding love after 20ths. Never late to find love to feel love.
Remembering Lennon and McCarney also: Love, Love is al we need.
In anyway sorry to wrotte this. Don´t know if will be published. But for a long time, i didin´t understand why you so popular arround the globe. Now with 30 years old, after reading you´re biography and travelling for different countries and meet other cultures, I not only understand this, as I admire you as wanna be, hope one day to be – a young Coelho. Not comparing because you are the master, the teacher, I´m just a student.
Sorry for my bad english. From Italy, Milano.
Dear Paulo, I think it’s a picture when you have moments as human being, you think you powerful and you are homo sapient master of the creation; and you think yourself know everything about love, and you have discovered its vocabulary; Then, you realize that you know less than you thought and you still student in love needs more to learn. Since love is beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, and since is unexplained by dictionaries or/and vocabularies, and since it’s a magical-desirable gift, unguided and unresistible!!! And although its mystery; Praise God when love visits you, because what is life without that precious mysterious guest! And remember that when love decides to leave you, leave it. And as he visited you without permission, he’ll leave you at the same way. Just live it as it is!!!
Luv you Prof!!!!!!!!
Does the heart feel what the eye sees?
Well, I would like these scientists to explain to me how I totally and deeply fell for someone over the internet. He fell for my picture and wrote to me ..NOT at all a love letter, yet it was in his first letter to me that the fascination was apparent.
Dear swan song i read what you wrote and i am in the same situation………
I am wondering the same thing as you are and i know what i feel is real!!!!!!!!!!!!!
actually its our brain that experiences emotions and feelings though we use the word heart… its like evrything happens in brain and heart beats faster or expereines physiological changes like other organs of body… SO its brain….we have brain areas that get activated whn we experience emotions n neurotransmiters released to help experience them..
I disagree with the fact that the brain falls in love – In all scriptures related to humankind, it is pretty onbvious that it is indeed the ‘Heart’ – the brain helps process the information that the eyes and other senses see – if its in tune with the heart desire, then i believe that it is then – the heart falls in love. when the heart is hurt (emotionaly), which hurts most, inner moste being and the Heart or the brain? Thats my cup of tea on the sibject!
i beg to this agree with your opinion, the BRAIN is like the Central Processing Unit of our body, the main organ that helps the other organ to function and the one which is responsible with the heart. As student of medicine, I believe that the brain process all the information to all parts of the body. Our heart doesn’t have it’s own desire, our MIND think of our desire. Many of us think that the heart falls in love because we have the minds set that the HEART signifies as LOVE. But scientifically speaking THE BRAIN FALLS IN LOVE and give signals to the heart to function, to the stomach to have butterflies and so on and so forth.
You have to like somebody in order to love somebody
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