The links between romantic love and mental illness

[swag]

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jun62005/snt142210200564.asp

Benedict Carey New York Times News Service

New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior -- compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops -- that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.

Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.

In an analysis of the images appearing Tuesday in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

. . . more

[trof]

1. I think I'm in love.

Or not?

[tigereye]

2. this is news?

;)

[swag]

3. Excellent point.

Maybe the news is that it's confirmed by MRIs.

[tigereye]

16. well

people in my profession (and scientists in general) are always amazed when they actually discover the biological underpinning or explanation for anything.... which others figured out long ago by deduction or inference... ;)

[Wapsie B]

4. I've felt that feeling many times.

Unfortunately the women I was with didn't share those feelings.

[expatriot]

5. I'm crazy for you!

I never wanted anything like this...


OH GOD THAT SONG!!!! I WAS SO STUPID!!!!!! WHAT WAS I THINKING, I WAS SO IN LOVE WITH HER and she just wanted to be friends.... she went to the prom with me as a FRIEND!!!!!! But I was 17 and wouldn't listen... it WAS FATE... I WAS SO IN LOVE WITH HER

:banghead:

okay... I'm okay now... nasty flashbacks. deep breath. It HAS been over ten years ago. relax. deep breaths.

[evlbstrd]

6. Helps to explain the divorce rate.

People come to their senses and go, "What have I done?"

[Wapsie B]

7. How true.

But thats what gets me about advice on love. The idea is to not go looking for it that if it's meant to happen it'll happen when you're not expecting it. Well all of these failed marriages happened. But they really shouldn't have happened.

[evlbstrd]

8. Impulse buying.

Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry.

[Wapsie B]

9. LOL!

:rofl:

That's probably very close to the truth.

[evlbstrd]

11. It's definitely what I believe.

I did it. Now I'm trying to get a refund.

[Wapsie B]

12. Same here.

[evlbstrd]

13. I hope you come out of it relatively unscathed.

[Wapsie B]

14. Thanks! You too.

Relationships shouldn't have to be like this. Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn't rethink this whole marriage thing altogether. They meaning us as a society.

[evlbstrd]

15. I was looking into the cost of a divorce.

I still have one child under 18, and property. Shit, we can barely get by as it is. Under a divorce decree, I'd have to declare bankruptcy. That is, while I still can.

edit for finger farts.

[enigmatic]

18. Exactly

In my experience, when I go looking for love, the bad choices and dry spells happen. When I don't, everything worked out...

[Redstone]

10. Not hardly news; poets have been writing about this

for a thousand years or more.

Redstone

[regnaD kciN]

17. "Closer to drives like drug craving"...

You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love.

;-)

Actually, that explains a whole lot...I've never experimented with the "hard stuff," but I have a long track record of what Doonesbury referrs to as "emotional belly-flops," and I can imagine what a drug addict must feel.

Beyond that, I note that this state isn't directly tied to sexual desire. That also makes sense. Hasn't anyone else here ever fallen totally in love with someone, while at the same time being very clear in their own mind that the relationship was Platonic, and having absolutely no desire to change that? If "falling in love" was all merely a cover emotion for wanting to have sex with that person, such an experience would make no sense at all. Under this model, it does.