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- LONDON (Reuters) - For some
people it's palpitations, a sense of euphoria and breathlessness. Others
say sweaty palms, light-headedness and a gut feeling are sure signs of
being truly, madly, deeply in love.
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- But scientists at University College London now have
more concrete proof of whether or not it's the real thing -- brain scans.
They have shown that the first flushes of true love produce visible changes
in the brains of people that can be seen with magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI).
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- ``We looked at the activity in their brain produced by
a picture of the person they love,'' Semir Zeki, a professor of neurobiology,
said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
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- ``There are four small areas of the brain in which activity
goes up and that increase correlates with their viewing of the picture
of the person they are in love with.''
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- Zeki and his colleague Andreas Bartels gave MRI scans
to 16 volunteers who said they were in love. Lie detector tests were also
used as an objective means of confirming their feelings.
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- Each volunteer was shown a picture of their beloved and
a photograph of a friend whom they had known for a similar period of time.
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- Whenever a picture of the loved one was shown it produced
chemical changes in the brain that were not active when they were shown
pictures of friends. The changes were clear-cut in each volunteer whenever
they looked on the image of the one they loved.
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- ``The emotional state is generated by activity in these
parts of the brain,'' Zeki explained.
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- ``These parts of the brain are also the parts which are
active in euphoric states generated by exogenous substances such as cocaine.
Romantic love is to for many people, at any rate, intoxicating.''
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- The scientists presented their findings at a conference
of European neuroscientists and have submitted the research for publication
in a peer-review journal.
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