Posted by The Situationist Staff on February 7, 2010 One week
before Valentine’s Day, Jessica Pauline Ogilvie published an
interesting article, titled “Scientists Try To Measure Love,”
for the Los Angeles Times. Here are some excerpts. * * *
Whatever its reason, there can be little doubt — even from a
scientific standpoint — about the potent feelings that being in
love elicits. Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook
University in New York, has done brain scans on people newly in
love and found that after that first magical meeting or perfect
first date, a complex system in the brain is activated that is
essentially “the same thing that happens when a person takes
cocaine.” In one such study, published in 2005, Aron recruited
10 women and seven men who had fallen in love within the last
one to 17 months. After taking a brief survey about the
relationship (items included statements such as “I melt when
looking deeply into ____’s eyes”), participants were put in MRI
machines and shown pictures of thei