Nov 24
Scientists have found a spot in the brain that seems to be related to the ability to stay madly in love with your spouse:
Researchers led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine recruited 17 men and women who still love their spouses intensely after two decades of marriage, then scanned their brains as they saw their loved ones’ photos. When they compared the results with scans of 17 people who had fallen in love in the previous year, they found that the same area of the brain, the ventral tegmental area, lit up.
I know my ventral tegmental area burns when I see my betrothed!
November 25th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Perhaps you’re addicted to fear by now!
The ventral tegmentum is considered to be part of the pleasure system, or reward circuit, one of the major sources of incentive and behavioural motivation. Activities that produce pleasure tend to activate the ventral tegmentum, and psychostimulant drugs (such as cocaine) directly target this area. Hence, it is widely implicated in neurobiological theories of addiction. Ibogaine, a psychoactive drug that reduces alcohol consumption, affects the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in VTA.[2]
It is also shown to process various types of emotion and security motivation, where it may also play a role in avoidance and fear-conditioning.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Ah…. perhaps I fear her.. Interesting.