Name: How Your Brain Falls In Love | Dawn Maslar | TEDxBocaRaton
Uploaded: 2018-09-20T08:12:53.000Z
Duration: 11 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Paola Benedetti Reviewer: Denise RQ

Is it something magical that happens to your brain,

or is there something biological that happens to your brain

we know some neurotransmitters increase and some drop.

Your cortisol level, the stress hormone, increases causing you to feel nervous,

while your oxytocin level increases causing you to feel amorous.

A woman's testosterone goes up causing her to be more aggressive,

while a man's drops causing him to be more passive.

And in both, their serotonin level drops causing them to be a little more obsessed.

And, although we know what happens, we don't know how you get there.

There are certain chemical processes happen,

including the tipping point, where you have an increase;

and also an enzymatic reaction, where you have a subsequent decrease.

Either of these would fit nicely into that missing section.

So I was pondering this, and I just happened to be on vacation.

and I have a cousin who is a PhD in biochemistry,

so I decided to use the opportunity to pick his brain.

I said, "Certain neurotransmitters go up, certain ones go down.

I looked at him, and he gave this expression of, "Plausible."

I said, "Some may have a tipping point reaction."

He said, "Plausible," or looked plausible.

And then, I said, "Others may be enzymatic with a subsequent decrease."

Again, he gave me the facial expression of plausible.

He's not a big talker, so I thought this was going really well.

But before I could formulate my next question,

my then 95-year-old grandmother spoke up, and she said,

"You, youngsters, don't know anything about love."

I was shocked, and I said, "Yeah, I know. That's why we're talking about this."

She said, "Your problem is you, young girls, jump into bed too quick.

You fall in love, but a boy doesn't fall in love that way."

"OK, let's talk a little bit more. How does a boy fall in love?"

And she said, "Back in my day, a girl knew

if she wanted a boy to fall in love with her,

Now, I had heard that stuff before: there was things like the three-date rule,

there's the 90-day rule from Steve Harvey's book,

but I always thought those were anecdotal.

I didn't think there was any science behind it,

I decided to continue with my grandmother

because of the date; the question was the date.

I said, "How long do you need to wait before you have sex?"

She says, "Ah, you wait to have sex until he falls in love."

"OK. Well, Granny, how do I know when he falls in love?"

She says, "Oh, that's easy, you know he's in love when he commits."

I looked over at my cousin, and I was like, "What do you think?"

and he hung his head, and he just shook it.

He said, "OK, Granny, it's time to go home."

I realized he was not buying any of this,

and my research had to continue on another day.

I returned home, and I hit the research library.

is there's not a lot of research out on how humans fall in love,

primarily, because of the way we do research.

He falls in love, and a researcher walks up saying,

"Congratulations! Can I inject this into your brain to see if it has an effect?"

So we had to rely on the next best thing: animal studies.

Well, we know when humans fall in love, they show exclusiveness to one person,

so they started looking at other creatures that mated exclusively.

And they ended up settling on these guys: the monogamous prairie vole.

When a prairie vole finds a mate that they're interested in,

So they started looking at the neurotransmitters

was one of the first things that increases is dopamine.

And if they block the dopamine, they would lose the loving feeling.

So they thought, "Oh, dopamine," but they knew there was a problem.

Dopamine couldn't be it with human romantic love

because dopamine goes up with a lot of things.

It goes up with gambling, chocolate, playing Candy Crush

So they said, "Well, we know there's another one

that's involved in bonding; it's called oxytocin."

And oxytocin goes up with mothers and children, that causes them to bond.

So they said, "Let's take a look at that," so they looked at that.

They found that when a female finds a man she's interested in,

and then if they block it, she loses that loving feeling.

So they said, "Ah, it must be dopamine and oxytocin,"

It can't be oxytocin for a man, because of testosterone.

Testosterone blocks the effects of oxytocin.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How Your Brain Falls In Love | Dawn Maslar | TEDxBocaRaton

commitment

expression

tend

cuddle