Brain+3

Brain Listen [|here], [|Crossword Puzzle 1,]  They say "romantic love" was [|invented]by the [|troubadours] of the Middle Ages. They also say it doesn't [|last]. But Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher and colleagues reported today that functional brain imaging studies show that being "in love" [|transcends]both culture and time. The researchers [|imaged]the brains of 17 young Americans and 17 young Chinese who had been in [|intense]love relationships for 6 months. The team compared how the volunteers' brains reacted to a photograph of a loved one versus a photo of someone they didn't know. When viewing a loved one, the brains of the volunteers registered activity in "several regions [|associated]with addiction," said Fisher--[|notably] in the [|ventral]tegmental area, a region of the brain [|stem]that are rich in receptors for [|dopamine], the [|chief]actor in the brain's "reward [|circuit]". The team also [|rounded]up 17 people of both sexes, aged 40 to 65, married at least 20 years, who said they were still "in love" with their spouses. The researchers found that the same areas were activated in most of them on viewing a photo of their [|spouse]. But longterm romantic love also [|stirred]up brainstem regions rich in [|serotonin] (see pic) and a chemical called vasopressin, which is associated with [|monogamy] in [|voles]. The [|upshot]is that the long-marrieds have the best of both worlds--they are still in love, but the "the obsession, mania and [|anxiety] " of newly- [|hatched] [|infatuation]"is replaced by calm," said Fisher. "We now have physiological evidence that romantic love can last," said Fisher triumphantly. "It now [|appears]from this study that romantic love exists not only to initiatie pair-[|bonding]but to [|maintain]and [|enhance]long-term relationships." --Constance Holden