What's love got to do with it?

Posted at 3:03 PM on January 7, 2009 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Science

An Emory University professor, Larry Young, writes in the journal Nature that love involves a series of neurochemical events that happen in a specific part of the brain.

If true, one will no longer need oysters, chocolates, or even cheap wine and some Barry White to create "a loving mood," as the BBC calls it.

Under Young's theory, scientists, some of whom can't currently get a date, could create chemicals that would make people fall in love with the first person they see, or even refall in love with someone.

"It may actually enhance our ability to form relationships, and so it is a very real possibility that something like oxytocin could be used in conjunction with marital therapies to bring back that spark," he says.

In the future, you may have to take a pill to stay married.

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Comments (3)

Love Potion #9?

Posted by boB from WA | January 7, 2009 3:14 PM

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Here is the next brave new world idea: We should get the government to assign us to a mate that would create the best offspring. Then we take the pills and we have a happy and loving relationship with our mate. Everyone wins, right?

Posted by Colin | January 7, 2009 3:32 PM

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I'm printing this to show my fifth-graders--we just finished reading/acting out Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream!" They'll get a kick out of the fact that Puck's magical flower may soon have a doppelganger in our world!

Posted by Molly | January 9, 2009 11:35 AM

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