American scientists have made an advance to prove Shakespeare's dictum, ‘love is blind and lovers cannot see’.
A brain in love looks like a neurological fireworks display.
The ventral tegmental area and ventral striatum, located in the centre of the brain, light up as the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine spring into action, causing a person to have short attention spans, feel happy and yearn for the object of her desire.
A 2005 study by Rutgers University biological anthropologist Helen Fisher and colleagues analysed the fMRI brain scans of 17 men and women who were reported being madly in love.
Each image showed the same activity in the brain's reward system as that which takes place in a cocaine addict's brain.
Moreover, the love-struck participants could readily tick off traits or characteristics they didn't particularly like about their lovers, but under the influence of pleasure-enhancing dopamine and other monoamines, they quickly ignore those faults.
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