ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 13, 1997 TAG: 9702130002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF KRAMER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Somewhere deep in your brain, memory mates with imagination and gives birth to anticipation.
With all the subtlety of a car crash, your limbic system - the most ancient region of the brain - converts the happy thought into raw emotion. Hypothalamus: check. Pituitary: check. Thyroid and adrenal glands: check. Your heartbeat spikes to that of a jogger's. Electrical impulses skitter across a veneer of sweat. Perhaps you feel breathless or sick to your stomach.
You may even suffer from piloerection - i.e. goosebumps.
Congratulations. You're in love.
Either that, or you're being chased by a wild animal. From a physiological perspective, the two states don't differ that much - or so say scientists.
``Love is an imbalance, but it's part of the normal continuum,'' says James Fallon, professor of anatomy and neurology at the University of California, Irvine. ``This may take some of the romance out of it. But something is happening.''
On Valentine's Day, that something apparently happens more than ever.
Otherwise brutish men bathe and buy flowers. Mild-mannered CPAs write lame love sonnets. Flirting co-workers fall face first into company water coolers.
But while Western tradition may romanticize such behavior, we pose a serious question on the eve of this sappiest of holidays: What in the central nervous system is going on? Quite a bit, it turns out.
As difficult as love is to define, its first flickers apparently begin in the prefrontal cortex, the section of your brain that enables you to anticipate the joy of being with a particular person - even one you've never met. If it's powerful enough, this so-called memory of the future engages the ancestral ``fight or flight'' response of the lower brain, which is responsible for such involuntary functions as stammering, tripping, drooling, exchanging astrological signs and laughing too loudly at someone else's joke.
Endorphins fuel the chemical cocktail. Similar in structure to morphine, endorphins are perhaps best known for creating a blissful sense of calm in long-distance runners. They leave lovers feeling similarly tranquil - but not in the early going.
During the initial stages of attraction, endorphins serve as a catalyst by triggering special cells in the midbrain to produce dopamine - a powerful natural amphetamine. In the bootcamp of romance, dopamine is the drill sergeant. It barks at the brain to select a plan of action - any plan.
Against so powerful a force, the amygdala - home of the brain's inhibition center - gamely attempts to introduce a note of caution.
``You could get hurt,'' it warns the lovelorn. ``You could make a fool of yourself. You could wind up paying lots of money for lawyers.''
But unless the risk of romantic entanglement is sufficiently dire (i.e. ``You could go to prison for a long, long time!'') the amygdala is swept asunder by the hormonal tsunami.
At this point - to use the neuroclinical term - you are ``toast.'' Your conscious mind selects from a menu of options ranging from cute to clumsy to catastrophic. Perhaps you send chocolates - which contain phenylethylamine, another neurochemical linked to love. Perhaps you invite that special someone upstairs to see your etchings.
In simplest terms, you've been reduced to a slave of your brain chemistry - but brain chemistry alone doesn't explain why you're behaving so strangely.
Experts say previous romantic experiences - or lack of them - play a major role in determining who you fall for and to what degree. Culturally imprinted expectations are part of the mix as well.
``Initially you fall in love with a projection,'' San Francisco psychologist Lonnie Barbach says. ``You're falling in love with who you think the other person is because you haven't met them yet.''
Researchers have found that males throughout the world, regardless of culture, exhibit universally strong responses to women 18-28 and to women whose waist circumference is 70 percent that of their hips. Both the age and the build, scientists believe, suggest fertility to males.
Similarly, computer tests show that symmetry in the human face and form is highly coveted by both sexes - a preference clearly rooted in genetics. ``When we see asymmetrical features, it's a suggestion of a genetic defect or a developmental problem, so we tend to avoid those people as love objects,'' says Michael Mills, a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
All of which suggests that love is anything but whimsical in an evolutionary sense. ``The reason we fall in love is because our ancestors who didn't fall in love didn't leave many descendants behind,'' Mills says.
Which in turn helps explain why you break out in nervous sweats and go through a quart of cologne a week when you're in love. The very existence of your unborn descendants depends on your next move. One misstep and you risk derailing the DNA train.
Then there's the startle reflex. Romantics tend to describe it as ``My heart leapt with joy'' - but actually it's more complicated: Supernormal levels of norepinephrine enter the bloodstream, causing your pupils to dilate, your blood pressure to climb and your artery walls to relax to keep from bursting. If your heart normally pumps five liters of blood per minute, the volume might climb as high as 15 liters.
How long you go on living like a frightened animal depends largely on whether your amorous ambitions are realized. Obviously, the outlook is happier when love runs both ways.
LENGTH: Medium: 96 linesby CNB