(http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/photos/23958851 null@null N00/2733516238)Kiss!
In this article, scientists peer into a research on two couples who are admittedly irregularities. Why? It is because they are still in love and going strong after ten years of marriage. Whoa! Marriage has now come down into this – making those who are successful as people who are not of the normal range. Researchers may not be examining at the thesis that fertilization-driven sex promotes separation. As a consequence, the strength of these relationships may be linked more to the age factor and less on fertilization-driven sex. The two relationships are on second marriages exactly as the Coolidge Effect would foresee. It is good to note that in each case one or both partners got hitched in middle age and at this stage, sex desire was generally on the decline.
Is it possible that these married couples unintentionally tapping the advantages of lots of cuddling with less fertilization-driven sex? Hmmm…consider this experiment, which demonstrated less clashes and stress in an older couple – and assumed to be involved in less fertilization-driven sex. Should we expect that soon drug corporations will be marketing us potent psychotropic drugs with accompanying side effects to help us achieve the aspiration of sustainable harmonious relationships? Thousands of years ago, the Taoists were renown to attain that using just natural means.
Notably, the social monogamy of the animals is not associated with sexual exclusivity. Well, this is really an eye-opener. The study of biology showed that animals have a preference for several partners as it multiply the genetic variety of our progeny.
Neuroscientists are studying the factors why some married couples can preserve the romantic flicker for years while others failed.
Mara Luna is pushing a shopping cart through the produce section of a grocery store when she turns to give her husband a sweet kiss. The supermarket kiss is a regular ritual for them. And so are the movie kiss and the outside-the-house kiss. “I admit that we do kiss many times,” says Mrs. Luna, a 35-year-old teacher. She must be doing what she teaches, huh!
It can be concluded that Mrs. Luna is living an almost fantasy “happily ever after.” Definitely, scientists are very inquisitive why. She is a part of a small percentage of men and women who say they subsist in the thrill of early love in spite of years of marriage, demanding jobs and other daily grinds that on normal cases could gradually fade away at love and passion.
Normally, couples discover that the dizzying and high emotion of early love gives way to a calmer and connection. Using modern methodologies, researchers are utilizing lab science to explore Mrs. Luna and others who are leading almost magical romances. It is hoped that the studies could help divulge the ins and outs of enduring zeal and perhaps one day lead to invigorating cold marriages and relationships.
Since time immemorial, philosophers and writers of all fame and persuasions have long examined in details the many things surrounding passion and love. In the 19th century, leading psychologists and sociologists introduced people to this discourse. Recently, neuroscientists joined in the fray. Traditionally, we view love as tied to the heart (please color it red for me) but right now they are scavenging answers in the brain with the use of modern magnetic imaging devices and other high-tech tools to seek the map of love’s pathways. It is no wonder neuroscientists are now part of the team.
Psychologists dwelling into relationships validate the consistent decline of romantic love. According to some surveys, each year the average couple drops a slight fire. One sociological study of marital satisfaction tracked more than 2,000 married people for a period of over 17 years. In conclusion, regular marital contentment fell sharply in the first 10 years and then a slow decline sets in.
Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University, became inquisitive about couples outside the standard range. His work showed up the typical pattern of declining passion. However, through his study he was drawn to what statisticians call as outliers — points way off the curve. These dots signified people who maintained they’d been intensely in love for years. “Was it because of random error? Were they just deceiving themselves? Were they deceiving others? It’s not supposed to happen.”
On a clear day in late August, Mrs. Luna made a trip to New York University’s Center for Brain Imaging. To know more of her, a four-ton device called a functional magnetic-resonance imaging scanner would scrutinize her brain while she gazed at her husband’s picture. The machines noted and recorded any changes in oxygen levels of blood circulating to the brain. The brain is swiftly supplying fresh blood to functioning areas and researchers apply them to pinpoint where the brain is more dynamic for the duration of such mental tasks as recognizing terms or feeling love.
There are only a handful of studies using magnetic imaging to study love. Partly because scientists argue if it is a good gauge of hard-to-define mental states. In 2000, the first popularly quoted research examined men and women who claimed to be in love intensely. That study successfully asserted that love could be map out in the brain.
In the next few years after that, Dr. Aron worked together with other scientists on a study that would press on further the subject. A study released in 2005 established the correlation between romantic love and the so-called reward-seeking circuitry – linked to such profound motivations as thirst or drug addiction. Dr. Aron unite with anthropologist Helen Fisher at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and with neuroscientist Lucy L. Brown at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. They scanned blood flow in the brains of 17 volunteers – by and large college students –as they stared at their lover’s photographs.
They established strong activity in a brain region named the ventral tegmental area – an area known to be rich in dopamine. This is a brain substance attached to feelings of gratification or pleasure. After that, one of Dr. Aron’s students replicated the same results in China — strengthening the notion that romantic love is a biological force
not tied to the culture.
Nevertheless, not one of the published studies centered on couples in long-term relationships. The research plan – as devised by Drs. Aron, Fisher and Brown — was to duplicate the experimentation with people who had been in love for more than 10 years in order to distinguish how they compare. The first stumbling block was finding such couples. (http://link NULL.brightcove NULL.com/services/player/bcpid452319854?bctid=1408708814)
Mrs. Luna is a thorough woman with black locks in a fairy cut who traveled to the U.S. from Philippines when she was just 8. She is introverted and speaks cautiously — from time to time slipping into statistical lingo when chatting with her husband. At times when the two Ph.D.s plan a celebration they ponder a “Type I error” against a “Type II error,” – like too little food or too much.
Vince, her husband at 59, is a tall and thin persona, working as applied-math professor at Stony Brook and who converses with a youthful eagerness. Their paths crossed while sitting across a horseshoe-shaped table at a math symposium in the Adirondack Mountains. “I knew right away we’d get married,” Mrs. Luna volunteered. Eventually, as fate would have it, they married less than a year later — on the very special Valentine’s Day.
They live in a two-story house in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. One afternoon last summer, their first son Teddy, age10, toils his PlayStation, and their toddler James engages with a toy car. Mr. Luna narrates their romantic courtship. “After the subsequent date, it would be three steps, stop and then kiss,” he averred. And after almost 12 years of happy marriage, they still look at each other as romantic ideals.
Researchers found the next couple: Mae Jordan, a 57-year-old communications consultant, and her husband, Michael Owens. They met on a cross-country flight. She sat after Mr. Owens, a muscular man from Gadsden, Ala. “I had this instantaneous reaction of, ‘What an attractive guy,’ ” she says. They talked all the way through the flight — her dry wit blending with his effortless charm.
Ms. Jordan and Mr. Owens lived in diverse cities so it took many months of long-distance telecommute dating before the first kiss. “You’re always careful about setting yourself up for disillusionment again,” recalls Ms. Jordan, who was 40 at the time. The marriage happened three years later and they now live happily in Newport Beach, Calif. Even after many years of togetherness, Ms. Jordan still seeks out her husband’s hand when they’re together. “It just comes to us naturally,” she utters.
Dr. Aron was positive that such long-term love was genuine even if to some extent an odd phenomenon. Brain bustle in the ventral tegmental area would bear the idea. However, Dr. Brown was skeptical. Her theory: Mrs. Luna and Ms. Jordan weren’t having the identical brain impulses as new lovers — and brain scans would demonstrate that.
Mrs. Luna remembers taking off a gold necklace – her husband’s gift — before descending into the fMRI apparatus. Photos of her husband are reproduced on a mirror on top of her. She bring to mind feeling “a affectionate contentment.”
In the past, most neuroscientists considered love an ill-defined subject best passed up. But a mounting body of studies illustrated that our attachments have a neurological basis. In 1996, a privately initiated convention in Stockholm had the title “Is there a neurobiology of love?” Sue Carter, an expert on the prairie-vole brain, was one of the organizers.
The prairie-vole is a North American rat that habitually mates for life — a very useful substitute for learning human attachments. Dr. Carter is a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is partly responsible for establishing a relation between vole monogamy and oxytocin — called the love hormone instrumental to bind mates as well as mothers and their baby.
Psychologists and social scientists toiled on a dissimilar track as they are applying their own theories about love to societal experiments and surveys. They have the most popular measure known as the Passionate Love Scale. They asked people to gauge and score 15 statements about their lovers, such as, “For me, [skin color] is the ideal romantic partner.”
The increasing partnership between the social and neurosciences is reflected in the work of Dr. Aron and company. Days after Mrs. Luna’s brain scan, Dr. Brown, the neuroscientist, sat in her cozy office staring at the results. “Wow!” she recollects thinking. Mrs. Luna’s brain responded to her husband’s photo with a fury of activity in the ventral tegmental area. “I was shocked,” Dr. Brown says.
The brain scan verified what Mrs. Luna said all along. But when she finally viewed the result, she too was a bit blown away. “It’s not rather what I imagined after 12 years,” she says. “But having it, it’s like a welcome gift.”
The scan also illustrated a notable reaction in Mrs. Luna’s ventral pallidum — an area believed from vole studies to have connection with long-term bonds. Mrs. Luna appears to enjoyed old love and new. In the months since, Dr. Brown analyzed figures from four more people, including Ms. Jordan, who also showed brain activity linked with new love. The study is still continuing, and more volunteers are being wanted.
Certainly, there is a great deal of work forward before scientists can eventually map the human-attachment structure and learn what aspects affect it.
That love drug may even be a more far-off dream.
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