Love is often regarded as indefinable, because some see it with Freud as a sublimation of sex, others with Fromm as one of the fine arts, and others to apply the word cat. But what if all three are right?
Anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, is based on experiments brain imaging (functional MRI) and the rest of the available evidence to defend a tripartite definition of love. First indiscriminate sex drive, an autonomous force that unleashes the search for partner in any sense of the term, then the selective sexual attraction, and finally the love, the emotional bond that holds long-term couples beyond passion.
brain processes are three different but interconnected. And they have a common evolutionary root depth, because its balance controls the reproductive biology of the species. The sexual impulse, the first phase of love, is regulated by testosterone (male) and estrogens (female) common in mammals, rather by testosterone in primates, and almost exclusively by testosterone in Homo sapiens.
Men with more testosterone in the blood tend to practice more sex, but women often feel more sexual desire around the ovulation period, when testosterone levels rise. The decline of this hormone with age is associated with reduced libido all types, including sexual fantasies.
Testosterone was not related to taste preference, but rather generic. Psychologists Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen, Reino Unido, acaban de demostrar, por ejemplo, que los altos niveles de testosterona -incluso en el mismo hombre, cuando varían en distintos momentos- se correlacionan con su gusto por los rasgos de la cara asociados a la feminidad, en genérico, como ojos grandes, labios llenos, etcétera. De modo similar, muchos estudios han mostrado que los juicios de las mujeres sobre el atractivo masculino están afectados por los niveles de las hormonas sexuales.
Varios experimentos han cartografiado las zonas del cerebro que se activan al enseñar a los voluntarios una serie de fotos de contenido erótico explícito. Aunque los resultados son complicados, una de las activaciones más reproducibles y proporcionales al grado de excitación sexual declared by the subject is called the anterior cingulate cortex. In a separate experiment, the same area was activated when the volunteer team got a goal, a match that supports a variety of interpretation. Or maybe none.
The second phase is romantic love, love in the classic sense of the word love. It is a universal human trait, and its defining characteristic is selective sexual attraction. For this reason, ethologists believe that human love may have evolved from the ritual of mate choice or courtship attraction characteristic of mammals. Seems to confirm the fact that in almost all mammals, that Courtship is characterized by a remarkable display of energy, obsessive pursuit, protection possessive of the alleged partner and bellicosity towards potential rivals.
But there is a difference. "In most species," says Fisher, "the couple's choice ritual lasts minutes or hours, as many days or weeks in humans, the early stage intense romantic love may last 12 to 18 months." A year and a half to choosing a mate, enough with the ritual of courtship.
As anthropologists have documented 147 human societies, romantic love begins "when an individual begins to look the other as special and unique." Then the lover suffers una deformación perceptiva por la que agiganta las virtudes e ignora las sombras del otro. Las adversidades estimulan la pasión, las separaciones disparan la ansiedad.
Son los signos de un alto nivel de dopamina en los circuitos del placer del cerebro, y así lo han confirmado los experimentos de imagen. Por ejemplo, enseñar a un voluntario una foto de su amada activa las rutas de la dopamina en los circuitos del placer. Estos circuitos guían gran parte de nuestro comportamiento -ni comer nos gustaría si no fuera por ellos-, y son los mismos que se activan en el ritual de cortejo, o de elección de pareja, de la mayoría de los mamíferos.
La hipótesis de Darwin era que las hembras elegían a sus couples based on their "innate sense of beauty", but the situation, at least in humans, appears to have suffered any complication. The team of Steve Buss, of the California State University at Fullerton, has shown that the same man seems more desirable to women if there is surrounded by women when it appears alone, or surrounded by other men. By contrast, a woman loses points if it appears before men surrounded by other men. The interpretation is not very clear but here is something that seems to escape the mere romanticism. There is another component in the choice of partner. When researchers asked heterosexual students groups which attributes most value to form a couple, each student seems to find the same traits that attaches itself in an independent test.
But romantic love, to be very long in humans, does not last beyond a year or year and a half, and the puppies of our species are totally disabled at that age. We need another mechanism to extend the bond, and there is. The clue came from two species of voles.
The prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) has an impeccable family behavior. The couples are faithful until death separates them, and even 80% of voles did not remarry after being widowed. Both partners collaborate without question in the care of offspring, and tend to live in peace with in-laws. Quite the opposite of its sister species, the mountain vole, Microtus montanus: sullen, cloistered in their individual burrows, traitors to their partners, males do not take care of the children at all, and females leave the pups at two parirlas weeks.
Larry Young, Emory University, found that the reputation of Microtus ochrogaster is true only on average: many of the prairie voles are faithful and gooey, in fact, but others are so treacherous and leathery as his cousins mountain. This enabled him to find the cause of these differences between individuals is a single gene that evolves very quickly. The gene produces the vasopressin receptor.
Vasopressin is a hormone that can alter behavior, but needs to be coupled to a receptor on neurons to exert its effects. Voles that are highly active version of the gene have a lot of vasopressin receptor in the brain, and therefore are true and cloying. Those who lead a very active version with little receptor and therefore are traitors and high activity malencarados.La version prevails among the meadow voles, hence the reputation of the species-, and low activity is the norm cousins \u200b\u200bof the mountain, but each vole is a world.
scientists began to analyze this gene in people and compare their versions with their psychological profiles. They also added to their research another similar gene that also has the ability to evolve very quickly, the oxytocin receptor.
The two genes are related to oxytocin and vasopressin, two hormones that affect the circuit of pleasure (or reward) of the brain. These hormones act through some receptors on neurons in those circuits. The two key genes produce the oxytocin receptor and vasopressin receptor.
Hasse Walum and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, recently studied 552 pairs of twins and their partners. Have analyzed their gene AVPR1a (Vasopressin receptor) and subjected to tests to assess their "quality scores in the marital relationship" and "relationship with the couple." 32% of men with the variant gene remain unmarried (compared to 17% with the standard gene), and all indices of "marital quality" and bonding are significantly lower.
When a prairie vole brain receives a dose of oxytocin, he is immediately linked to the male who is closest at the time, and so enduring. In humans, it has made a similar test, but with money. A team of economists and psychologists showed that a simple Swiss inhalation of oxytocin spray ago people rely more on the strange and, for example, give them more money in a fictitious (but with real money for the volunteer position.)
Both genes evolve very quickly and produce variants (alleles) of greater or lesser activity, with similar effects to increase or decrease the amount of hormones. Already offer online products such as Liquid Trust Enhanced based on oxytocin, "designed to improve the area of \u200b\u200bdating and relationships in your life."
But love is much like the self-esteem. Lisa DeBruin, of McMaster University in Ontario, recruited a few years ago a group of online volunteers to play a kind of prisoner's dilemma. Each Volunteer your computer could see the face of another player and that alone had to decide whether he shared with his money or trying to make a blunder. The blunder, in fact, had made all the volunteers DeBruin, because the other side there was no computer. The course player was not simply a program, and the faces had been generated by computer. The result was that most of the volunteers had decided to pool their money innocently when the face of another player was ... Your own!
If a fourth stage of love, the more likely you are to the other side of the mirror.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey, is based on experiments brain imaging (functional MRI) and the rest of the available evidence to defend a tripartite definition of love. First indiscriminate sex drive, an autonomous force that unleashes the search for partner in any sense of the term, then the selective sexual attraction, and finally the love, the emotional bond that holds long-term couples beyond passion.
brain processes are three different but interconnected. And they have a common evolutionary root depth, because its balance controls the reproductive biology of the species. The sexual impulse, the first phase of love, is regulated by testosterone (male) and estrogens (female) common in mammals, rather by testosterone in primates, and almost exclusively by testosterone in Homo sapiens.
Men with more testosterone in the blood tend to practice more sex, but women often feel more sexual desire around the ovulation period, when testosterone levels rise. The decline of this hormone with age is associated with reduced libido all types, including sexual fantasies.
Testosterone was not related to taste preference, but rather generic. Psychologists Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen, Reino Unido, acaban de demostrar, por ejemplo, que los altos niveles de testosterona -incluso en el mismo hombre, cuando varían en distintos momentos- se correlacionan con su gusto por los rasgos de la cara asociados a la feminidad, en genérico, como ojos grandes, labios llenos, etcétera. De modo similar, muchos estudios han mostrado que los juicios de las mujeres sobre el atractivo masculino están afectados por los niveles de las hormonas sexuales.
Varios experimentos han cartografiado las zonas del cerebro que se activan al enseñar a los voluntarios una serie de fotos de contenido erótico explícito. Aunque los resultados son complicados, una de las activaciones más reproducibles y proporcionales al grado de excitación sexual declared by the subject is called the anterior cingulate cortex. In a separate experiment, the same area was activated when the volunteer team got a goal, a match that supports a variety of interpretation. Or maybe none.
The second phase is romantic love, love in the classic sense of the word love. It is a universal human trait, and its defining characteristic is selective sexual attraction. For this reason, ethologists believe that human love may have evolved from the ritual of mate choice or courtship attraction characteristic of mammals. Seems to confirm the fact that in almost all mammals, that Courtship is characterized by a remarkable display of energy, obsessive pursuit, protection possessive of the alleged partner and bellicosity towards potential rivals.
But there is a difference. "In most species," says Fisher, "the couple's choice ritual lasts minutes or hours, as many days or weeks in humans, the early stage intense romantic love may last 12 to 18 months." A year and a half to choosing a mate, enough with the ritual of courtship.
As anthropologists have documented 147 human societies, romantic love begins "when an individual begins to look the other as special and unique." Then the lover suffers una deformación perceptiva por la que agiganta las virtudes e ignora las sombras del otro. Las adversidades estimulan la pasión, las separaciones disparan la ansiedad.
Son los signos de un alto nivel de dopamina en los circuitos del placer del cerebro, y así lo han confirmado los experimentos de imagen. Por ejemplo, enseñar a un voluntario una foto de su amada activa las rutas de la dopamina en los circuitos del placer. Estos circuitos guían gran parte de nuestro comportamiento -ni comer nos gustaría si no fuera por ellos-, y son los mismos que se activan en el ritual de cortejo, o de elección de pareja, de la mayoría de los mamíferos.
La hipótesis de Darwin era que las hembras elegían a sus couples based on their "innate sense of beauty", but the situation, at least in humans, appears to have suffered any complication. The team of Steve Buss, of the California State University at Fullerton, has shown that the same man seems more desirable to women if there is surrounded by women when it appears alone, or surrounded by other men. By contrast, a woman loses points if it appears before men surrounded by other men. The interpretation is not very clear but here is something that seems to escape the mere romanticism. There is another component in the choice of partner. When researchers asked heterosexual students groups which attributes most value to form a couple, each student seems to find the same traits that attaches itself in an independent test.
But romantic love, to be very long in humans, does not last beyond a year or year and a half, and the puppies of our species are totally disabled at that age. We need another mechanism to extend the bond, and there is. The clue came from two species of voles.
The prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) has an impeccable family behavior. The couples are faithful until death separates them, and even 80% of voles did not remarry after being widowed. Both partners collaborate without question in the care of offspring, and tend to live in peace with in-laws. Quite the opposite of its sister species, the mountain vole, Microtus montanus: sullen, cloistered in their individual burrows, traitors to their partners, males do not take care of the children at all, and females leave the pups at two parirlas weeks.
Larry Young, Emory University, found that the reputation of Microtus ochrogaster is true only on average: many of the prairie voles are faithful and gooey, in fact, but others are so treacherous and leathery as his cousins mountain. This enabled him to find the cause of these differences between individuals is a single gene that evolves very quickly. The gene produces the vasopressin receptor.
Vasopressin is a hormone that can alter behavior, but needs to be coupled to a receptor on neurons to exert its effects. Voles that are highly active version of the gene have a lot of vasopressin receptor in the brain, and therefore are true and cloying. Those who lead a very active version with little receptor and therefore are traitors and high activity malencarados.La version prevails among the meadow voles, hence the reputation of the species-, and low activity is the norm cousins \u200b\u200bof the mountain, but each vole is a world.
scientists began to analyze this gene in people and compare their versions with their psychological profiles. They also added to their research another similar gene that also has the ability to evolve very quickly, the oxytocin receptor.
The two genes are related to oxytocin and vasopressin, two hormones that affect the circuit of pleasure (or reward) of the brain. These hormones act through some receptors on neurons in those circuits. The two key genes produce the oxytocin receptor and vasopressin receptor.
Hasse Walum and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, recently studied 552 pairs of twins and their partners. Have analyzed their gene AVPR1a (Vasopressin receptor) and subjected to tests to assess their "quality scores in the marital relationship" and "relationship with the couple." 32% of men with the variant gene remain unmarried (compared to 17% with the standard gene), and all indices of "marital quality" and bonding are significantly lower.
When a prairie vole brain receives a dose of oxytocin, he is immediately linked to the male who is closest at the time, and so enduring. In humans, it has made a similar test, but with money. A team of economists and psychologists showed that a simple Swiss inhalation of oxytocin spray ago people rely more on the strange and, for example, give them more money in a fictitious (but with real money for the volunteer position.)
Both genes evolve very quickly and produce variants (alleles) of greater or lesser activity, with similar effects to increase or decrease the amount of hormones. Already offer online products such as Liquid Trust Enhanced based on oxytocin, "designed to improve the area of \u200b\u200bdating and relationships in your life."
But love is much like the self-esteem. Lisa DeBruin, of McMaster University in Ontario, recruited a few years ago a group of online volunteers to play a kind of prisoner's dilemma. Each Volunteer your computer could see the face of another player and that alone had to decide whether he shared with his money or trying to make a blunder. The blunder, in fact, had made all the volunteers DeBruin, because the other side there was no computer. The course player was not simply a program, and the faces had been generated by computer. The result was that most of the volunteers had decided to pool their money innocently when the face of another player was ... Your own!
If a fourth stage of love, the more likely you are to the other side of the mirror.
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