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Love: A Chemical Reaction

posted by pylorns

Ever wonder why men fall asleep and women want to cuddle after sex? Well if you haven’t been up with the times, research science has found the answer. Its three main chemicals: Vasopressin, Oxytocin and Serotonin. The research has come up with some interesting facts including why women want to cuddle.

When a couple has sex, the brain releases Vasopressin, Oxytocin and Serotonin. Serotonin, has a calming and relaxing effect, and mixing like a drug coctail with testosterone becomes like a sleeping pill for men, but with women who have low levels of testosterone, but higher levels of estrogen, it becomes the bonding pill, or the cuddle time. This effect is what causes women to form lasting bonds with men and in a sense causes them to become more faithful the more they get this coctail. In a sense addicted to it.

Other approaches are also shedding light on the question. In 2000, Andreas Bartels and Semir Zeki of University College, London, located the areas of the brain activated by romantic love. They took students who said they were madly in love, put them into a brain scanner, and looked at their patterns of brain activity.

The results were surprising. For a start, a relatively small area of the human brain is active in love, compared with that involved in, say, ordinary friendship. �It is fascinating to reflect�, the pair conclude, �that the face that launched a thousand ships should have done so through such a limited expanse of cortex.� The second surprise was that the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. �We are literally addicted to love,� Dr Young observes. Like the prairie voles.

Basically the Love emotion is like cocaine- which makes sense in a way, because if it wasnt so addictive - why would humans do it? Why would mother nature not make a way for us to find a way to continue life?

If you are interested in reading more - check it out here.

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