By GABRIELLE MARTIN, Staff Reporter.
Valentine’s Day is around the corner and the aisles of many stores are overflowing with hearts. However, research has shown that love comes more from the brain than from the heart, and love at first sight may be more than just a cliché.
The process of falling in love can sometimes be unexplainable, but Delta student Kassie Hanks, 24, has a unique metaphor.
“It almost feels like when you were a little kid and you got to dress up for Halloween and go out when the street lights were on. It’s exciting and you don’t know what’s coming.”
There are three stages of love says Dr. Charissa Urbano, a biology professor at Delta College. The first stage is lust/attraction, followed by romantic love/early dating and finally attachment/long-term bonding. An article on youramazingbrain.org explained that it takes between 90 seconds and four minutes to decide if you are attracted to someone.
“We do have an attractional meter that we use and we process that fairly quickly,” says Dr. Charissa Urbano, a biology professor at Delta College, “the hot or not meter.”
In the initial phase of love several chemicals, including dopamine and norepinephrine, are released in your body, having quite dramatic effects.
“Some of the same chemicals released during these early stages of love are also associated with OCD behavior and even the euphoria stages of drug response,” says Urbano.
Dopamine is the pleasure chemical. It’s the very same chemical that’s released when a person is high on cocaine. Being the pleasure chemical, it can cause addiction. Love can quite literally be addicting. Norepinephrine is what is responsible for the lovely effect of getting sweaty palms and a racing heart when you see your crush or significant other.
Low levels of the chemical serotonin are found in both people with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and people in love, explaining why people in love can sometimes think of little else.
Then there is stage three: the attachment phase. During this stage, the chemical vasopressin is released. Vasopressin is related to long-term bonding, says Urbano. This is the phase that allows couples to successfully stick together and raise children. It is linked to the reward centers of the brain and mammals who are monogamous have higher levels of vasopressin than do non-monogamous mammals.
This is also the stage when oxytocin is released. Oxytocin (commonly referred to as the “love hormone” or “cuddle hormone”) is a hormone released during orgasm and plays a crucial role in making couples feel attached to each other. Oxytocin is also crucial in cementing the bond between a mother and her child as it is released during childbirth and breastfeeding, according to an article on the American Psychological Association website.
After all of this, an important question is raised. Does love come from the heart or the brain?
“Science is showing us that it probably comes from the brain,” says Urbano. She goes on, though, to explain how when people get married and make vows, they believe in those vows and the commitment. At that point, it’s not just the chemistry keeping them together.
“The brain falls in love but love is something more than logic,” says 43-year-old Delta student, Dave Stocker. “Love surpasses logic.”