Your Brain on Love

Photo courtesy of flickr.com member Tracy Ducasse

Happy Valentine’s Day! Whatever your feelings about February 14th may be—the most romantic day of the year, a holiday created because of corporate greed, or you don’t care; it’s just another Monday—we think this article about love and the brain is worth sharing. In a study done by the University College London, researchers found that the area of your brain associated with determining someone’s character and personality is suppressed when a person experiences either romantic or maternal love.

Why do our brains impair our negative judgment of people when we’re in love? Well, it’s important for us to see the love for a child or a potential mate as positive experience in order for our species to survive. This helps explain why we continue to love the kids who throw tantrums in grocery stores and the significant others who keep doing that one thing you have told them over and over not to do. And thanks to the study we can now, with confidence, say that love really is blind.

Allison Nonko