The science of falling in love

That spark
Beth Dobson, an engineering student at the University of British Columbia, has been happily besotted with Mario since they met at a Red Cross symposium in high school more than two years ago, and they are the poster couple for obsessive, passionate love. They live several hours from each other but speak on the phone daily and visit every weekend by Greyhound bus.

"I can't wait to see or speak to Mario. I look forward to it all day, to tell him about my day, to hear his opinion, to hold him," says Beth. Sometimes she even speaks to him when he's not there. "I daydream about him. He's always on my mind. You know how you have that internal monologue always going on in your mind? Well, now I'm not having that discussion with myself, I'm having it with Mario."

Fisher and other love researchers have had a field day studying the love-struck brains of young people, such as Beth and Mario, who, they have hypothesized, are under the influence of a powerful chemical cocktail. To date, Fisher’s research has confirmed that love stimulates the central part of the reward circuitry of the brain, a "motherlode for dopamine-making cells," she says, which produces focused attention, fierce energy, concentrated motivation to attain a reward and feelings of elation, even mania – the core feelings of romantic love.

Even though she hasn't proved it, she believes increased levels of norepinephrine, a chemical stimulant derived from dopamine, may also play a role because of its ability to produce feelings of exhilaration, sleeplessness and loss of appetite.

You're always on my mind
Fisher also theorizes that people in love fall victim to obsessive thinking about their beloved because they, like patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, have lower levels of serotonin in their brains. "As levels of dopamine and norepinephrine climb, they can cause serotonin levels to plummet," she says. "This could explain why a lover's increasing romantic ecstasy actually intensifies the compulsion to daydream, ponder and obsess about a romantic partner."

And brain research out of the U.K. confirms that the love-bitten brain is active in the same centres that generate drug highs. So when Beth observes that she "craves" physical contact with her boyfriend, she isn't kidding; love is indeed addictive and uses the same neural mechanisms that are activated by drug dependency. "Addiction to drugs simply usurps the brain chemistry that's already there for falling in love," says Pfaus.

Though her love-saturated brain is out of chemical balance, Beth is unfazed. "I don't care if it never settles down!" she exclaims.

Page 3 of 5