Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Helen Fisher and the Anatomy of Love

I came across a very interesting article of Professor Helen Fisher on Love during one of my visits to Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madurai, several years ago. There, in the Library of the Math, this fascinating article caught my eye. As I did not have any paper, I managed to get just a few pieces of paper and jotted down the material from that article that impressed me. On returning home, I must have kept the bits of papers safely somewhere and then must have totally forgotten about them. Today while clearing my papers, I could get hold just one piece of paper, on going through which, I could recall the excitement on reading the original article. Unfortunately, the head, the tail and most of the body have been lost; just one piece in between remains. However, the remaining one piece is still impressive.

Then I surfed the net and got hold of more interesting material about Dr Helen Fisher and her work on the Anatomy of Love.

First I shall reproduce the scribbled material from the surviving bit of paper:

“What Helen Fisher saw fascinated her. When each subject looked at his or her loved one, the parts of the brain linked to reward and pleasure – the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus – lit up. What excited Fisher most was not so much finding a location, an address, for love as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which Fisher came to think as part of our endogenous…………….” (Sorry, there ends the scribbling).

The information gleaned from the Net are given below with links:

Dr Helen Fisher, an Anthropologist at the Rutgers University, USA, has been doing research on human behaviour. She has been recognized internationally as a leading expert on the topic of Love. The three phases of love, according to her, are: Lust (intense longing), Attraction (an action that tends to draw people together) and Attachment (a bonding progression).

For detailed study, just click:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Fisher_(anthropologist) (Biography and details about her work)
http://www.whatischemistry.com/about/about-dr-fisher-interview.php#10 (Interview at Whatischemistry.com)
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=SPxmHKLwj3MC&dq=Helen+E+Fisher&prev=http://www.google.co.in/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DHelen%2BFisher%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1&cad=author-navigational (Why We Love: The Nature And Chemistry Of Romantic Love)
http://chemistry.typepad.com/the_great_mate_debate/dr_helen_fisher_1/index.html (The Great Mate Debate: Dr Helen Fisher)
http://quotes.zaadz.com/helen_fisher (Quotes by Helen Fisher)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/ (The Science of Love – BBC)

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