Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata
Love, a feeling which has given pain as well as happiness to the world; a particular genre that has helped people to find a certain livelihood. It’s a feeling celebrated all over the world and is portrayed in the form of art, sculpture, music, movies, poems, stories, and so on. Even a day or rather a week has been made to showcase love every year. Well, something which is thought to be very well known but is actually not. Most often we connect love with the heart when the heart is nothing but an organ to pump blood and is in no way involved with “love”. So why do we blame this innocent organ without any guilt? Well, how would it look like holding your head while speaking of love? It might most often be mistaken for a headache, right? Jokes apart, It’s the brain or we can say the intermediate brain that is responsible for “love”. Let us discuss love in detail.
History behind “love”:
“Love” has always been in the limelight, being included as a reason behind almost everything. Since the heartbeats were found to increase on being excited, it was always thought to be an effect of love; when actually the signals from the brain caused these changes. Truly, the brain here is the master and the heart is the slave. This view persisted for a long time and thus became an established fact through creative masterpieces which are still praised. Even Plato and Aristotle are known to have supported this view confidently. Then one fine day in 1957, Dr. Arvid Carlsson showed the world, the hormone dopamine in the basal ganglia and proved its functions related to the transmission of signals from a neuron to the other. He also found out that it is not a precursor of norepinephrine. Norepinephrine was discovered quite earlier though (in the 1940s) by Ulf von Euler (Swedish physiologist). Several studies took place on these two hormones after the discoveries and finally, emotions were concluded to be a result of these hormones and their activities.
Chemistry behind love:
We often do things that make us feel good. For example, we say that we love a particular song because it makes us feel good, and thus listening to it is like rewarding ourselves. Thus, the pathway of love or rather the chemistry that creates the feeling of love is the “reward pathway”. In this pathway, the hypothalamus and the adrenal medulla release dopamine and norepinephrine, the two major love hormones. These hormones then lower the level of serotonin. All these together create a great deal of energy, eagerness, and other positive moods in an individual while also causing insomnia and a loss of appetite due to reduced serotonin in the blood. Must be thinking about how the body can fight without food and proper sleep right? Well in this regard it must be said that norepinephrine is another name for noradrenaline, the most famous “fight or flight” hormone. This is the reason why the contraction and relaxation of the heart are increased and also body fat gets broken down and blood sugar level rises thus resulting in more energy. This again establishes the “you fight if you love” concept. You see, it’s all in your hormones. Also, when we say that we remember things that we want to, we mostly mean that when we like something and want to remember it, the “love hormones” are released, thus increasing our concentration, energy, and learning abilities. Other hormones which take part in love include testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin, and vasopressin. While the first two are related to lust, the last two create attachment.
Love can’t be forced:
Now we know that love is a science and you can’t force science, it takes place following all the laws and can’t be manipulated, so how can love be? You can’t put a gun on your own head asking for the release of dopamine and norepinephrine. This is again when the very well-known word “harmony” comes into play. Though it’s a musical term it describes the proper frequency, wavelength, and tune mixed together. It’s very much unpredicted that which harmony will be liked by whom. It’s unknown when the hormones will be released. Thus, it’s unknown what or whom we will love or rather which combination will shower happiness on us. And here comes the most debated topic “career”. Negative peer pressure often leads to an individual ending up with something they don’t like doing. This in turn creates fatigues due to lower hormonal release. When we love a job, we are energized and when we are not, we are tired, and trying not to be the same makes us depressed as well. So, when your body and your hormones support the idea of a person or a job or a hobby or anything, try to follow it other than following what others are trying to enforce upon you. Why? Well because you will be a “self-help” to yourself with your entire body helping you and that’s how success is achieved, by loving.
So in the end, it must be concluded that love is nothing but the rise and fall of hormones induced by certain external forces which gives the power to fight for the certain feeling of “reward”.
Also read: Anaemia and Insomnia might be related!!!
Source:
- Yeragani VK, Tancer M, Chokka P, Baker GB. Arvid Carlsson, and the story of dopamine. Indian J Psychiatry. 2010 Jan;52(1):87-8. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.58907. PMID: 20174530; PMCID: PMC2824994.
- https://www.truelovebook.net/2017/02/love-hearts-brains/#:~:text=The%20heart%20has%20nothing%20to,blood%20all%20over%20the%20body.&text=Love%20is%20perceived%20by%20the,to%20beat%20faster%20and%20stronger
- https://ideas.ted.com/how-did-the-human-heart-become-associated-with-love-and-how-did-it-turn-into-the-shape-we-know-today/
- Feldman R. The Neurobiology of Human Attachments. Trends Cogn Sci. 2017 Feb;21(2):80-99. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.007. Epub 2016 Dec 30. PMID: 28041836.
- https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/
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