(HealthSCOUT) -- Have you ever looked at an oddly matched couple, and wondered, "What were they thinking?"
Turns out that they might not have been thinking much at all, says a new study.
Using a functional magnetic resonance imager, or fMRI, two University College London researchers scanned the brains of people who were in love while they were looking at photos of either their loved one or a friend. Those in love showed inactivity in the parts of the brain that control higher thought and depression, while areas that rule emotion, senses and awareness of feelings were more active when looking at a loved one.
"I was surprised that only so few areas and such small areas are activated by love," says study co-author Andreas Bartels, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University College London. "You would expect love to affect large regions."
Results of the study were presented recently at the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies in Brighton, England.
Bartels and his colleague recruited 17 volunteers -- 11 female, six male -- who described themselves as "truly and madly" in love. All of the subjects were in their 20s.
They were shown pictures of their love partner, as well as pictures of three different friends. The researchers tried to match the friends in the photos as closely as they could to the love partners for age, sex and length of friendship.
Significant differences showed up. Love activates parts of the brain that are responsible for intuition and the "butterflies in the stomach" feeling, researchers found. It also stimulates a part of the brain that responds to drugs. Love deactivates areas that contribute to depression, and it seems to shut down an area of higher thought.
"This study makes it exceptionally clear that falling in love is a brain function," says Dr. Thomas Lewis, a psychiatrist and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He is also the author of A General Theory of Love.
"This probably is a neurological explanation for why people in love do stupid things," says Lewis. "People in love have no judgement, and this imaging study shows that that area of the brain is deactivated."
What to Do
Since love seems to turn off higher thought, you might want to hold off on falling in love if you've got a tough presentation at work or a calculus test coming up.
On the other hand, if you're feeling a little blue, falling in love might be just what the doctor ordered.
If you want to read about the attachment theory of love, go here.
If you don't care about theories and you're just looking for love, check out American Singles.
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