Loooooove … Love Is Strange

Scientists take a look at love. Their conclusions:

Among other areas, parts of the pre-frontal cortex—a bit of the brain towards the front and implicated in social judgment—seems to get switched off when we are in love and when we love our children, as do areas linked with the experience of negative emotions such as aggression and fear as well as planning. The parts of the brain deactivated form a network which are implicated in the evaluation of trustworthiness of others and basically critical social assessment….

Now neuroscience is telling us that our brains dumb down and rule our hearts so we rush into sex, then produce children whom we also continue to care for no matter how little they reciprocate.

It would seem that one of love's mysteries has at last been cracked by science—if we used our brains to their full capacity all the time and didn't deactivate clear thinking and critical judgment, the species would never have got off the ground.

[Via Lew Rockwell.]