For centuries, love has been probed -- and of course celebrated -- mostly by poets, artists and balladeers. But now its mysteries are yielding to the tools of science, including modern brain-scanning machines.
It's way too soon (and, we can hope, always will be) to say that brain scientists have translated all those warm and fuzzy feelings we call romantic love into a bunch of chemicals and electrical signals in the brain.
But they do have a plausible hypothesis -- that dopamine plays a big role in the excitement of love and that oxytocin is key for the calmer experience of attachment.
And it's conceivable that, as Emory University neurobiologist Larry J. Young pointed out in the journal Nature this year, once scientists understand the chemistry of love, drugs to manipulate the process "may not be far away."
clipped from: www.latimes.com