Sunday is For Deep Thinking
Feb. 22nd, 2004 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookAt home, lying on the couch, crampy and with a backache, watching a strange variety of television. Earlier today, there'd been a show called Saints Preserved, on Saints' relics, then one called Angels: Good or Evil? on the History Channel. The relics one was most interesting, moreso because I've even seen some of the relics they'd shown, so it was kind of interesting to see a TV program about it.
Relics fascinate me. When we traveled in Italy, I couldn't resist going into a church with a good reliquary on display. Some even lit up when you pushed a button, like the cathedral in Sienna near our hotel that featured the head of the town's patron Saint in a small theatrical niche, almost like a puppet theater stage. You could sit in chairs in front of the shrine to pray. As experiences go, it's a strange combination of bizarre and sublime - you really come away feeling something intense, even if you can't quite put words to it.
But here's the sightem of the day: in The Economist (Feb. 14-20 edition), there's an article about the chemical nature of love. Apparently, research done with the monogamous prairie vole has revealed some chemical markers and receptors that are necessary to the entire idea of mating as something like romantic love. Humans, like voles, are hard-wired for love, not just sex, while other animals are not - they don't have the correct receptors, so even if pumped full of the correct chemicals, their behaviour doesn't change. They're still promiscuous one-night-stand types. Voles, however, thanks to this discovery, can be chemically made to fall in love with an injection... even if sex is prohibited between the target pair. And voles mate for life. Which is something to think about.
Weirder still: same issue, same article - research in humans as to what happens in your brain when you're in love. The brain area that activates for intense feelings of love isn't the same one that comes on line when experiencing other strong emotions, such as fear or anger. Here's the quote that caught my eye:
Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. "We are literally addicted to love," Dr. Young observes.
Also reading a book called Opening Skinnner's Box, on psychological experiments, and their sociological effects. Fascinating. Ever hear the Skinner box story? The author, Lauren Slater, gets down to the truth of it. Great stuff on what these experiments really meant and what they still mean about how people's brains work.
In other news, Alexander Valley vineyards makes a wine called "Sin Zin." Yummy.
Relics fascinate me. When we traveled in Italy, I couldn't resist going into a church with a good reliquary on display. Some even lit up when you pushed a button, like the cathedral in Sienna near our hotel that featured the head of the town's patron Saint in a small theatrical niche, almost like a puppet theater stage. You could sit in chairs in front of the shrine to pray. As experiences go, it's a strange combination of bizarre and sublime - you really come away feeling something intense, even if you can't quite put words to it.
But here's the sightem of the day: in The Economist (Feb. 14-20 edition), there's an article about the chemical nature of love. Apparently, research done with the monogamous prairie vole has revealed some chemical markers and receptors that are necessary to the entire idea of mating as something like romantic love. Humans, like voles, are hard-wired for love, not just sex, while other animals are not - they don't have the correct receptors, so even if pumped full of the correct chemicals, their behaviour doesn't change. They're still promiscuous one-night-stand types. Voles, however, thanks to this discovery, can be chemically made to fall in love with an injection... even if sex is prohibited between the target pair. And voles mate for life. Which is something to think about.
Weirder still: same issue, same article - research in humans as to what happens in your brain when you're in love. The brain area that activates for intense feelings of love isn't the same one that comes on line when experiencing other strong emotions, such as fear or anger. Here's the quote that caught my eye:
Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction. "We are literally addicted to love," Dr. Young observes.
Also reading a book called Opening Skinnner's Box, on psychological experiments, and their sociological effects. Fascinating. Ever hear the Skinner box story? The author, Lauren Slater, gets down to the truth of it. Great stuff on what these experiments really meant and what they still mean about how people's brains work.
In other news, Alexander Valley vineyards makes a wine called "Sin Zin." Yummy.
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Date: 2004-02-22 05:50 pm (UTC)I was fascinated by the Skinner box experiment when I read about it in college. The book sounds interesting.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-22 06:06 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-22 06:14 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-22 06:24 pm (UTC)OK, that makes sense. We can be in love (crazily, manic-ly) separate and apart from having a long-term commitment. And the long-term thing might not carry the same emotional weight as the lust/love one. Neat.