The chemistry of that emotion called LOVE

Love is more than just a meeting of two hearts; it has a lot to do with the brain. Why, there’s even a formula for love, discovers Anand Raj OK

Shakespeare was convinced it was pure madness, “a madness most discreet’’, he wrote in what is perhaps his best-known ode to love, Romeo & Juliet.

For Jane Austen it was something that  pierced her soul and left her in “half agony. Half hope”, but Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie believed it was “a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles."

Helen Fielding felt “it's like having a blanket all round your heart" while Ernest Hemingway was sure it’s absence would mean he wouldn’t “live at all”.

Ah, love – that heady cocktail of joy, pain, and irresistible pull that has driven writers to pour out powerful emotions, poets to wax lyrical, and scientists to test, scan, probe and even develop a chemical formula: Love= C8H11NO2 + C10H12N2O + C43H66N12O12S2 (in layman terms, Love= Dopamine + Serotonin + Oxytocin.)

We’ve all felt its effects, that all-consuming fervor where reason falters, and life suddenly takes a new course when your eyes briefly lock with that one person in a crowded room. That moment when a fluttering of the eyelashes or the arching of an eyebrow is enough to leave you with butterflies in your stomach, a racing heart, and a smile on your face for the rest of the day (and sleepless nights for a very long time).

But what really happens in the brain when we fall in love, and why, as Keats put it, does “a thing of beauty” become “a joy forever”?

Shakespeare perhaps knew the answer; love he was sure, “looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”.

Today, scientists tell us that romantic love is not unlike a drug. When you’re smitten, your brain releases a potent mix of dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin – hormones that make you feel euphoric, bonded, and somewhat obsessed.

The celebrated neuroscientist Helen Fisher, who passed away in August this year, noted that these chemicals combine to create a state that is, quite literally, addictive. Brain scans of people in love reveal activity in the same regions that light up in the brains of addicts on a high, she discovered.

(Scientists also discovered that falling in love seems to reduce your ability to be judgemental while encouraging you to take risks, again not unlike many addicts.)

But of course, love isn’t always a gentle stroll through the clouds. When love goes awry, dopamine levels drop as do serotonin levels leading to that hollow feeling we call emptiness, heartbreak, where appetite vanishes, and thoughts circle lost love. A study found serotonin levels in new lovers to be strikingly similar to those suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - a pointer to the obsessive, irrationally jealous behavior we see in some people in love. It also proves that infatuation might just be the original “madness most discreet.”

Now that you know at least a bit about the chemistry of that emotion called love, will it affect the way you fall in love?

Neuroscientist Helen Fisher who rediscovered love at the age of 75 (after a marriage in her twenties that lasted just 4 months) was asked the same question: whether, knowing as much as she did about the science of love, love itself was spoiled for her.

Hardly, she said. You could know all the ingredients in a chocolate cake, but when you actually ate it, it was just joy.

Go ahead, fall in love!