THE EXPERIENCE OF NOVELTY.

When we fall in love, we first begin to feel that our beloved is novel, unique. The love object takes on special meaning. As one person reported: “My whole world had been transformed. It had a new center, and that center was Marilyn.” This phenomenon is coupled with the inability to feel romantic passion for more than one person at a time. Kabir, a 15th century poet of India, wrote of this: “The lane of love is narrow. There is room only for one.”

Increased concentrations of dopamine in the brain are associated with exposure to a novel environment. Increased levels of dopamine are also associated with heightened attention, motivation, and goal-directed behaviors. These parallels suggest that levels of dopamine are rising in the brain as a lover focuses on a beloved.

INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS. We begin to think about our beloved obsessively, engaging in what is known as “intrusive thinking.” As a line from an 8th century Japanese poem reads, “My longing has no time when it ceases.” Many people report that they think about their “love object” over 85 percent of their waking hours.

Serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (which increase active levels of the chemical messenger serotonin) are currently the agents of choice in treating most forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). As intrusive thinking is a form of obsessive behavior, I have speculated for some time that low levels of serotonin are responsible for the intrusive thinking of romantic passion. Now, neuroscientist Donatella Marazziti of Pisa University and her colleagues have confirmed that low levels of serotonin are indeed associated with romantic attraction. These researchers studied 20 students who reported that they had recently fallen in love, 20 patients with unmedicated OCD, and 20 control subjects. Blood platelets from those who said they were in love and those with unmedicated OCD showed a significantly lower density of a serotonin transporter protein, a protein involved in the travel of serotonin between nerve cells.2 In short, as one begins to fall in love, levels of serotonin decrease.

FOCUSED ATTENTION. When possessed by love, we tend to focus our attention on the positive qualities of the beloved, and to overlook or falsely appraise negative traits. Infatuated men and women also focus on events, objects, songs, letters, and other things that they have come to associate with the beloved. An unpublished survey I designed and administered to 420 American and 430 Japanese men and women illustrates this point: 72 percent of men and 84 percent of women remembered trivial things that their beloved said; 82 percent of men and 90 percent of women said they replayed these precious moments as they mused.

As we saw in discussing the experience of novelty, increased levels of central dopamine are associated with focused attention. Moreover, we know that the neurotransmitter norepinephrine is associated with increased memory for new stimuli. Increased levels of norepinephrine in the brain have also been associated with “imprinting.” Imprinting is a term from the study of animal behavior that was originally used to define the instinctive behavior of infant geese as they begin to focus their attention on their mothers, following them everywhere. The focused attention of the infatuated man or woman appears much like imprinting on the beloved—an indication that increased concentrations of norepinephrine are involved.

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