A Study by Semir Zeki Tries to Answer What is Love

Everyone knows what love is, and everyone has felt love at some point in their life. It is a universal feeling, a good feeling. The question is though, is there a chemical equivalent to love? What happens to the brain in love? According to Sultan Tarlaci, when a person is passionately in love he or she feels pure happiness and they are willing to risk more and fear less. He goes even further to state that a person is basically obsessed with the person whom they love and are willing to die for them. So, what do people feel when they are in love? According to studies, when people are in love they frequently think about the beloved, more accurately about 85% of waking time consist of thinking about the person they love. They feel euphoric happiness and fear and anxiety are reduced. Furthermore, their priorities change and they put the needs of the beloved before their own and their possessions, even a piece of trash, are seen as sacred. Additional affects aside from feelings that occu r are loss of appetite and pain sensitivity, increase in pulse rate, palpitations, sweating, trembling, intestinal activity, and increase in stomach acid and rate of swallowing; these responses have made people think that the heart was the mechanism of love (Tarlaci, 2012). In a 2004 study done by Semir Zeki and his colleagues, an fMRG was taken of the brains of people in love. This study showed that when shown a picture of the person they loved, their subcortical reward system presented a lot