| Spotlit in darkness, ROB wears a rich Renaissance VELVET CUPID COSTUME. | ||
Here's the phrase of the week: "metabolically expensive." |
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| He points toward the links with an arrowtip. | ||
| I heard an interview with Helen Fisher, author of the new Why We Love, on her Valentine's Day publicity tour. She talks of recent research, summarized smartly in the Economist, that begins to sketch three separate brain systems involved in what we call "love."
The Romantic Love system The Sexual Craving system The Long-Term Attachment system |
| Spotlit in darkness, ROB wears rich Renaissance VELVET CUPID COSTUME. | ||
Here's the phrase of the week: "metabolically expensive." |
||
| He points toward the links with an arrowtip. | ||
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Each system involves different combinations of brain regions and different blends of chemicals --- just as other emotions like joy and sadness are not opposites, but work in parallel and each involve quite different brain areas from different stages of human evolution. The recent work is revealing more about the Romantic Love system, which involves the release of the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, and may have neurochemical similarities to OCD obsessive compulsive disorder. It was fun to hear a scientist describing those behaviors so long the near-exclusive province of poets --- enormous energy, staying up all night, elation (sharing some neurochemical similarities to cocaine), intrusive obsessive thoughts of the beloved, cravings for a reciprocal response from the beloved. Summarizing, Fisher said: "Being in love is enormously metabolically expensive . . ." and proceeded a few steps down the slippery slope of speculating on why adaptation/evolution should have valued this system and kept it around. |
| Rob WRESTLES a wayward lace WING back onto his shoulder. | ||
| So, I've been enjoying thinking in terms of "metabolic expenditure" this week. It's an accurate way to evaluate many experiences: well-invested resources like dawdling with your beloved or seeing an heart-pounding thriller on the big screen, and wastes like the "crazymakers" in your life who cost you a metabolic fortune by each time they reach you on the phone.
"Sorry. Gotta hang up now, you've exceeded your budget. Bye." |