Do you believe in love at first sight or should you restart this video until you find me attractive?
Hey loves, Julian here for DNews.
We all know that nauseating couple that just won’t shut up about how they just met and
BOOM, they found eternal joy and happiness.
No one likes that couple.
If you don’t know that couple, you’re that couple.
Part of the problem with this idea of love at first sight is it sounds so implausible.
There’s 7 billion people out there and you just glanced at someone and went, “Yep,
that’s the one forever?”
Well, guess what killjoys, love happens faster than you think.
First of all let’s talk about love.
What is love?
Baby don’t hurt me.
Don’t hurt me.
No more, sorry, couldn’t resist.
Anyway there’s a lot of different angles to tackle the question from but for our sake
let’s just boil it down to chemicals in your brain.
Feelings of desire, emotional connection and bonding are facilitated by neurotransmitters
and hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin.
So how long does it take for this brain cocktail to start brewing?
Well back in 2010 Dr. Stephanie Ortigue, an assistant professor of psychology and neurology
at the University of Syracuse, conducted a meta-analysis of love research.
The study was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Ortigue and colleagues examined participants in fMRI machines and found that 12 areas of
your brain can start lighting up and slinging chemicals around within .2 seconds of slapping
eyes on someone.
“But hold on,” the cynic in you says.
“What if that’s just lust, not love?”
Good point.
And my response is, “Neurologically, what’s the difference?”
Well Ortigue’s study tries to answer both those questions.
A lot of similar areas lit up for people who had fallen in love compared to people who
had fallen in lust, so for her it came down to whether they craved some sort of reward
right now, of if they thought more long term and abstractly about it.
People in love showed increased activity in areas associated with reward like the ventral
striatum, and parts of the brain associated with emotion like the amygdala, hypothalamus,
and the inferior parietal lobule.
Ortigue interprets that to mean that love is something that can grow out of lust, as
your brain adds complexity to a foundation that was built around achieving simple pleasant
physical satisfaction.
So if you experienced lust at first sight but now want to gush to your friends about
how you knew it was true love, you were close enough already that I say go ahead and modify
history a little bit.
Actually according to Dr. Donna Jo Bridge of Northwestern University, because we have
a tendency of inserting new information into our memories, you’re probably doing that
already.
Love may or may not begin with a glance, but it is undeniable that every kiss begins with
Kay.
Look at the spelling, it’s right there.
Kay Jewelers is one of our sponsors at Discovery Digital, they help keep the lights on and
the episodes coming, so if you want to thank them and score bonus points with that special
someone, go ahead and check out Kay’s line of jewelry.
The brain is an amazing organ.
It starts firing in regular wave patterns 25 weeks after you’re conceived and keeps
working right up until the moment you fall in love.
Alright it doesn’t stop but it starts changing in some interesting ways.
Check out Trace’s piece on that right here, you’re going to love it.
So, love at first sight.
Do you believe in it?
Have you experienced it?
Lay your sappy love story on us in the comments, subscribe for more, and I’ll see you next
time on DNews.