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FULL TEXT My Love is Chemical James Adams Valentine's Day is here, Spring is approaching, and as the poet Tennyson wrote, "a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love," and he might have added, neurotransmitters and hormones. Researchers have begun to unlock the secrets behind the age-old mystery of love, and they're finding that, for both men and women, the key really is in the chemistry. "There's no doubt in my mind that there are a whole series of biochemical pathways that are triggered when two people meet and are attracted to each other," says James Weinrich, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego. "One of those pathways would have to do with the experience of being 'head-over-heels' preoccupied with someone. Where you can't get that person out of your head, they intrude into your thoughts, and everything that they do is remarkably charming to you." As anyone who has ever experienced it knows, the rush of falling "head-over-heels" in love is intoxicating. And it appears to be due, in part, to the effects of a neurotransmitter released by a region of the brain called the hypothalamus. That neurotransmitter, called "the molecule of love" by Theresa Crenshaw, M.D., author of The Alchemy of Love and Lust, is phenylethylamine (PEA). "It causes that euphoria of falling in love. It gives that wonderful feeling, that feeling that this person that you're attracted to can do no harm, this person has nothing wrong with them. When PEA is high is when 'love is blind," explains Robert Friar of Ferris State University in Michigan. It's kind of a chemical Cupid, firing an arrow into the brain and firing up those feelings of falling in love. (from Kabai Péter: peter.kabai@gmail.com) |
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