True Love Shows Up On Brain Scans
Scientists have discovered true love. Brain scans have proved
that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion
after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush
of love.
The findings overturn the conventional view that love and sexual
desire peak at the start of a relationship and then decline as
the years pass.
A team from Stony Brook University in New York scanned the brains
of couples who had been together for 20 years and compared them
with those of new lovers.
They found that about one in 10 of the mature couples exhibited
the same chemical reactions when shown photographs of their loved
ones as people commonly do in the early stages of a relationship.
Previous research suggested that the first stages of romantic
love, a roller-coaster ride of mood swings and obsessions that
psychologists call limerence, start to fade within 15 months.
After 10 years, the chemical tide has ebbed away.
The scans of some of the long-term couples, however, revealed
that elements of limerence mature, enabling them to enjoy what
a new report calls intensive companionship and sexual liveliness.
The researchers nicknamed the couples swans because they have
mental love maps similar to those of animals that mate for life
such as swans, voles and grey foxes.
The reactions of the swans to pictures of their beloved were
identified on MRI brain scans as a burst of pleasure-producing
dopamine more commonly seen in couples who are gripped in the
first flush of lust.
"The findings go against the traditional view of romance
-- that it drops off sharply in the first decade -- but we are
sure it's real," said Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony
Brook.
Previous research had laid out the fracture points in relationships
as 12 to 15 months, three years and the infamous seven-year itch.
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