Total Eclipse of the Brain - Central Bucks School District



Psychology | Wiley | Sources on Love & Attraction Name:The Brain in Love, by Dr. Helen Fisher (neuroscientist/biopsychologist and anthropologist)Anthropologists have found evidence of romantic love in ________ societies. They have ______________ found a society that did not have it. What percentage of college students said they’ve been rejected by somebody they’ve loved?In Dr. Fisher’s research on people in love, she found that ___________________ (a natural stimulant) was being sprayed to many brain regions.What were some of the things Dr. Fisher found in the brains of those who had just been dumped?How does Dr. Fisher link love to addiction?Describe Dr. Fisher’s take on animals and love. What does Dr. Fisher say to those that ask her if love has been spoiled by her research?What is a question that Fisher has been working on recently? What does she hypothesize?Fisher uses evolutionary psychology to explain why men and women experience intimacy with one another differently. Explain:Women: face-to-face, which stems from:Men: side-by-side, eye-contact avoidance, which stems from:Why We Love: An Evolutionary Perspective, by Dr. Glenn GeherFrom an evolutionary perspective, something that is shared widely across a large proportion of a species begs to be explained in evolutionary terms. The nature of a finch’s beak must speak to the evolutionary history of finches. The plumage of a peacock’s tail must tell us something about how peacocks choose mates and how they ultimately reproduce. The length of a giraffe’s neck must tell us something about the kinds of vegetation found in the environments of the ancestors of giraffes.Humans are no different. Features that are universal to our species provide clues to who we are and where we came from. The emotion of love is no exception. Love is a human emotion that has been documented in human groups across time and space. Further, romantic partners who report themselves as deeply in love consistently show similar neuropsychological activation in cognitive neuroscience studies of the love experience. The nature of love in humans is a window into our ancestral past.Parental Investment and Human Mating SystemsSpecies vary in terms of how advanced their offspring are at birth, which ultimately means that they vary in terms of how able their offspring are to care for themselves at birth. Some species are “precocial,” meaning that their offspring are advanced relatively quickly. For instance, fawns will get up and start walking on the day they're born.On the other hand, some species are “altricial,” meaning that their offspring are not particularly advanced at birth—and that they need a lot of time and care in order to develop appropriately. Think about humans: We are not like deer! Our offspring are not walking on their first day.?In fact, we’re lucky if our offspring are walking in the first year.?And even then, anyone who has ever watched a one-year-old knows full well that they need you to be with them every step of the way.?Humans are a classic altricial species.The Parental Investment Theory is the idea that the amount of required parental investment in a species should map onto the social and mating-related behaviors of that species. If a species is relatively precocial, we would not expect long-term mating to evolve, which is true across a wide range of species. When you consider a species with quickly advancing offspring, you do not find long-term mating, monogamy, or anything of the kind. Bucks and does, for example, spend very little time together.Further, in species with relatively altricial offspring (such as?birds like the emperor penguin or the North American robin), long-term mating systems may well occur. This is because in an altricial species, having multiple parents around to help provide resources and raise the offspring can be critical. This pattern is often called “bi-parental care,” and it's a hallmark of species with altricial young. You can probably see where this is going: Yes, humans have altricial young, and so humans have long-term mating systems and things like monogamy.The Evolutionary Function of LoveLove within a pair-bond is clearly an evolved product of high levels of parental investment in humans. Love is marked by psychological processes such as passion and intimacy with a specific partner. It is also marked by physiological processes such as increased levels of oxytocin and autonomic nervous system arousal specific to being in proximity to one’s partner. Love motivates you to be near your partner. To be with your partner. To help your partner. To be kind to your partner. And all of these things make so much evolutionary sense when you consider them in terms of bi-parental care.?Offspring with?two doting (and cooperative) adults around to help them?simply have an advantage over offspring with only one doting adult around. Love evolved to provide the emotional framework for maintaining pair-bonds, largely because we are an altricial species with relatively helpless young. ?From an evolutionary perspective, love ultimately exists because it helped our ancestors form strong pair-bonds that facilitated successful child rearing. So when you find yourself in discussions about whether love is “real,” I’d say that from an evolutionary perspective, the answer is absolutely. Love is a basic feature of human mating intelligence that evolved to solve very specific adaptive problems in our altricial species. I'm not sure if that’s romantic, but I’m an evolutionary psychologist, and that’s what I’ve got.How does this evolutionary psychologist use the parental investment theory to explain why our ancient ancestors developed loving relationship?When human beings “couple” today, few would say they are doing so to “form strong pair-bonds that facilitate successful child rearing.” While that may in fact be a subconscious factor in the decision to couple (evolutionary psychologists would say so), what do you think are the conscious factors leading people to couple?right648800How your body reacts when you fall in love, by Lindsay Tigar, 2016Butterflies in your stomach, a racing heartbeat—you probably remember those symptoms well from your first middle school crush. As an adult, they're actually your body's subtle clues that you're falling in love (or lust, at least). At the start of a relationship, a series of truly fascinating chemical reactions occur throughout your nervous system and hormones. . .Being in love is like a drug addiction: Kesha wasn't too far off when she described love as a drug, according to a 2010 study conducted at Rutgers University. Researchers concluded that falling in love is much like the sensation of feeling addicted to drugs with the release of euphoria, including brain chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline, and vasopressin. Kat Van Kirk, PhD, a clinical sexologist and licensed marriage and family therapist, says these chemicals are released throughout different points of attraction, and help bond you with your partner. Like drugs, the more time you spend with this person, the more addicted you become, she says.Read MoreIt's also like being drunk: Having a few too many glasses of wine makes you less inhibited, fearful, and anxious, and more aggressive and boastful—and so does oxytocin, the "love hormone," according to a University of Birmingham study. Researchers pooled existing research into the effects of both oxytocin and alcohol and although they impact different parts of the brain, they have similar outcomes.Your cheeks flush, palms sweat, and heart races: Before a big date, you might notice your heart rate tick up and your hands get sweatier. It's not just a nervous tick that causes your anxiety to rise; it's actually the stimulation of adrenaline and norepinephrine, says Dr. Kirk. "This can lead to having a physical sensation of craving and the desire to focus your attention on that specific person," she says.Your pupils dilate: When you're attracted to someone . . . there is a stimulation in your nervous system's sympathetic branch, which causes your eyes to dilate, says Dr. Kirk.You won't be able to keep your eyes off your partner: There's a scientific reason why you have photos of your love set as your smartphone background or framed on your desk. The desire to literally look at your partner's face comes from the brain's release of dopamine, says Dr. Kirk. "This is the same effect on the brain as taking cocaine because it stimulates the desire/reward response related to intense pleasure," she says. In other words, when you scroll through photos from your vacation together, you get a surge of energy, as your desire is being fulfilled.Your voice might actually get higher: Once you're past that crush stage and you're deepening your connection and commitment to your partner, you might notice other odd changes in your body—including your voice getting higher (yes, really). According to a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, researchers found that when women spoke to men they were more attracted to physically, their voice tended to get higher and more feminine. So if you're a bit softer with your partner than you are with your co-worker who keeps missing your deadlines, blame it on love.You will worry when they're not around: When we're separated from our partner for brief or extended periods of time, we respond like a drug addict who is coming off of their addiction, says Serena Goldstein, a naturopathic doctor in New York City. "Corticotrophin releasing factor is increased as part of a stress response when we are away from our partner, contributing to anxiety and depression," she says. Those couples who are in long distance relationships learn to cope with this feeling, often through developing attachments to their partner's voice as a way to stay connected to him or her.Falling in love may mess with your hormones: During the honeymoon phase of a relationship—the first one to two years when you go ga-ga every time you see your sweetie—your hormones go haywire. According to a 2004 study published in Psychoneuroendocrinology, cortisol (the stress hormone) increases in both men and women. And during this time, testosterone, the male sex hormone, decreases in men and increases in women. [One evolutionary explanation of a decrease in the male sex hormone in the honeymoon phase is to promote the monogamy necessary for partnership and parenting. No clear explanation for the increase in female testosterone has been posited.]Your sex drive is the highest at the very beginning: At the beginning of a relationship, couples can't keep their hands off each other, but it can be tough to keep that spark alive long-term, especially for women, according to a study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. Researchers from the University of Geulph in Ontario, Canada surveyed 170 men and women in monogamous heterosexual relationships about relationship satisfaction, sexual satisfaction and sexual desire. Researchers found that although the guys' sexual appetite held steady over time, women experienced a .02 drop on the Female Sexual Function Index for every month they remained in a relationship. . . If you get married, you may live a longer, healthier life: Tying the knot may lengthen your life. According Duke University Medical Center study, those who entered their 40s married had fewer risk factors for premature death than those who were divorced or never married. Another study from NYU Langone Medical Center in New York found that both married men and women may have stronger hearts than those who've never walked down the aisle. Men especially have stronger hearts thanks to their wives, with 5% lower odds of any vascular disease, according to the research.It can ease chronic pain: A passionate, all-consuming relationship may work just as well as medication at easing chronic pain, according to a 2010 Stanford University School of Medicine study. Intense feelings of love activate the same areas of the brain as painkillers, say researchers. Doctors aren't quite ready to prescribe love affairs as replacements for drugs, but are optimistic that understanding how neural-reward pathways triggered by love will help them develop new methods to treat pain.Describe what the 2010 Rutgers University study found with regards to love:According to psychologists, why do many “in love” experience a racing heart, sweaty palms, etc.?What happens to women’s voices when they are talking with men they are attracted to?What is research showing about health benefits and long-term, committed relationships?Love, Actually: The science behind lust, attraction, and companionship, by Katherine Wu, Harvard University, 2017What is love? Scientists in fields ranging from anthropology to neuroscience have been asking this same question (albeit less eloquently) for decades. It turns out the science behind love is both simpler and more complex than we might think. . . [A]s with most science, we don’t know enough to draw firm conclusions about every piece of the puzzle. What we do know, however, is that much of love can be explained by chemistry. So, if there’s really a “formula” for love, what is it, and what does it mean?left102489000Total Eclipse of the Brain: Think of the last time you ran into someone you find attractive. You may have stammered, your palms may have sweated; you may have said something incredibly asinine and tripped spectacularly while trying to saunter away. And chances are, your heart was thudding in your chest. It’s no surprise that, for centuries, people thought love (and most other emotions, for that matter) arose from the heart. As it turns out, love is all about the brain – which, in turn, makes the rest of your body go haywire. According to a team of scientists led by Dr. Helen Fisher at Rutgers, romantic love can be broken down into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment. Each category is characterized by its own set of hormones stemming from the brain (Table 1).Table 1: Love can be distilled into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment. Though there are overlaps and subtleties to each, each type is characterized by its own set of hormones. Testosterone and estrogen drive lust; dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin create attraction; and oxytocin and vasopressin mediate attachment.Let’s Get ChemicalLust is driven by the desire for sexual gratification. The evolutionary basis for this stems from our need to reproduce, a need shared among all living things. Through reproduction, organisms pass on their genes, and thus contribute to the perpetuation of their species.The hypothalamus of the brain plays a big role in this, stimulating the production of the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen from the testes and ovaries (Figure 1). While these chemicals are often stereotyped as being “male” and “female,” respectively, both play a role in men and women. As it turns out, testosterone increases libido [sexual desire] in just about everyone. The effects are less pronounced with estrogen, but many women report being more sexually motivated around the time they ovulate, when estrogen levels are highest [if they are not on birth control].Figure 1:?A: The testes and ovaries secrete the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, driving sexual desire. B and C: Dopamine, oxytocin, and vasopressin are all made in the hypothalamus, a region of the brain that controls many vital functions as well as emotion. D: Several of the regions of the brain that affect love. Lust and attraction shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which includes rational behavior.Love is its Own RewardMeanwhile, attraction seems to be a distinct, though closely related, phenomenon. While we can certainly lust for someone we are attracted to, and vice versa, one can happen without the other. Attraction involves the brain pathways that control “reward” behavior (Figure 1), which partly explains why the first few weeks or months of a relationship can be so exhilarating and even all-consuming.Dopamine, produced by the hypothalamus, is a particularly well-publicized player in the brain’s reward pathway – it’s released when we do things that feel good to us. In this case, these things include spending time with loved ones and having sex. High levels of dopamine and a related hormone, norepinephrine, are released during attraction. These chemicals make us giddy, energetic, and euphoric, even leading to decreased appetite and insomnia – which means you actually can be so “in love” that you can’t eat and can’t sleep. In fact, norepinephrine, also known as noradrenalin, may sound familiar because it plays a large role in the fight or flight response, which kicks into high gear when we’re stressed and keeps us alert. Brain scans of people in love have actually shown that the primary “reward” centers of the brain, including the caudate nucleus (Figure 1), fire like crazy when people are shown a photo of someone they are intensely attracted to, compared to when they are shown someone they feel neutral towards.Last but not least, attachment is the predominant factor in long-term relationships. While lust and attraction are pretty much exclusive to romantic entanglements, attachment mediates friendships, parent-infant bonding, social cordiality, and many other intimacies as well. The two primary hormones here appear to be oxytocin and vasopressin (Figure 1).Oxytocin is often nicknamed “cuddle hormone” for this reason. Like dopamine, oxytocin is produced by the hypothalamus and released in large quantities during sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth. This may seem like a very strange assortment of activities – not all of which are necessarily enjoyable – but the common factor here is that all of these events are precursors to bonding. It also makes it pretty clear why having separate areas for attachment, lust, and attraction is important: we are attached to our immediate family, but those other emotions have no business there. Love HurtsThis all paints quite the rosy picture of love: hormones are released, making us feel good, rewarded, and close to our romantic partners. But that can’t be the whole story: love is often accompanied by jealousy, erratic behavior, and irrationality, along with a host of other less-than-positive emotions and moods. It seems that our friendly cohort of hormones is also responsible for the downsides of love.Dopamine, for instance, is the hormone responsible for the vast majority of the brain’s reward pathway – and that means controlling both the good and the bad. We experience surges of dopamine for our virtues and our vices. In fact, the dopamine pathway is particularly well studied when it comes to addiction. The same regions that light up when we’re feeling attraction light up when drug addicts take cocaine and when we binge eat sweets. For example, cocaine maintains dopamine signaling for much longer than usual, leading to a temporary “high.” In a way, attraction is much like an addiction to another human being. Similarly, the same brain regions light up when we become addicted to material goods as when we become emotionally dependent on our partners (Figure 2). And addicts going into withdrawal are not unlike love-struck people craving the company of someone they cannot see.The story is somewhat similar for oxytocin: too much of a good thing can be bad. Recent studies on party drugs such as MDMA and GHB shows that oxytocin may be the hormone behind the feel-good, sociable effects these chemicals produce. These positive feelings are taken to an extreme in this case, causing the user to dissociate from his or her environment and act wildly and recklessly. Furthermore, oxytocin’s role as a “bonding” hormone appears to help reinforce the positive feelings we already feel towards the people we love. That is, as we become more attached to our families, friends, and significant others, oxytocin is working in the background, reminding us why we like these people and increasing our affection for them. While this may be a good things for monogamy, such associations are not always positive. For example, oxytocin has also been suggested to play a role in ethnocentrism, increasing our love for people in our already-established cultural groups and making those unlike us seem more foreign (Figure 2). Thus, like dopamine, oxytocin can be a bit of a double-edged sword.Figure 2: Dopamine, which runs the reward pathways in our brain, is great in moderate doses, helping us enjoy food, exciting events, and relationships. However, we can push the dopamine pathway too far when we become addicted to food or drugs. Similarly, too much dopamine in a relationship can underlie unhealthy emotional dependence on our partners. And while healthy levels of oxytocin help us bond and feel warm and fuzzy towards our companions, elevated oxytocin can also fuel prejudice.And finally, what would love be without embarrassment? Sexual arousal (but not necessarily attachment) appears to turn off regions in our brain that regulate critical thinking, self-awareness, and rational behavior, including parts of the prefrontal cortex (Figure 2). In short, love makes us dumb. Have you ever done something when you were in love that you later regretted? Maybe not. I’d ask a certain star-crossed Shakespearean couple, but it’s a little late for them. . . According to psychologists, _____________________________________ drive lust; ____________________________________________________________ create attraction; and ____________________________________________________________ mediate attachment. What role does the hypothalamus play in love/attraction? ______________________________________________ shut off the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the part of the brain associated with rational thinking/behavior. What specific roles do dopamine and norepinephrine play in love/attraction? What is stimulated during sex, breastfeeding, and childbirth in both men and women, helping to explain “attachment,” the predominant factor in long-term relationships? What are some of the downsides of the chemical and hormonal love/attraction reactions? How can love “make us dumb”? ................
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