Why your heart beats faster

Love is generally associated with chocolate hearts and mushy poetry and rarely with test tubes and science labs. However, extensive research has gone into explaining what makes us, from a scientific standpoint, feel love. This research can be divided into two often intersecting parts, the physical and psychological perspectives.
To a scientist or biological chemist, love can essentially be reduced to the release of hormones and chemicals into the body after being triggered by stimuli picked up by our various senses. All five senses of the body are used and processed by the brain to generate feelings of attraction.

Most researchers, and people in general, agree that love begins as an attraction to another individual. The feeling of attraction is in many ways similar to the thrill you experience riding a roller coaster, skydiving, or watching a horror movie with the lights turned down, and consequently will create many of the same physical symptoms.
Your heart begins to beat faster to supply a steady amount of oxygen to your brain and muscles. You blush as this blood rushes to your face and your eyes dart around as you react to this new excitement. It is no surprise then that the chemical stimuli released by your brain when experiencing these thrills and attractions are also identical.
Dopamine is possibly the greatest contributor to the sensations felt during an exciting experience.

The ventral tegmentum, according to neuro-researchers, is responsible for the release of dopamine during thrilling encounters including the feeling of attraction.
As this attraction grows, other substances begin to be released by the brain as well. Serotonin, a substance synthesized by the central nervous system, works as a stimulant throughout the body. This hormone can be highly potent, and has lead to researchers creating artificial serotonin to be used as an anti-depressant.

Both of these substances are identified and processed by the amygdala, a bundle of nerves in the brain that rests just above the hippocampus. It is the processing of these substances by this section of the brain that creates the positive reactions experienced by one feeling attraction.

“The amygdala activates the attraction and emotion that most people call love,” explained AHS Psychology teacher Scott Hambrick.

With two highly potent hormones being released often simultaneously, and an entire section of the brain devoted to analyzing them, it is no wonder that love and attraction cause us to write poetry, film lengthy movies and create an internationally celebrated holiday dedicated to the feeling.
After the initial stages of attraction however, love begins to shift forms. At it’s earliest stages, love is simple attraction, but as you age, love becomes a matter of devotion.  “Generally teens attribute love to an emotion, but as you get older the amygdala does not drive adult decision making as much. Love is more about commitment with adults,” said Hambrick.

This could be a response to the need to have a child as a teen in order to pass on one’s genetics, and the requirement to raise and foster a child later on. One could not possibly hope to care for and give proper attention to a child while experiencing the same compassionate, fiery attraction of youthful love. Instead, the amygdala gives up its responsibilities to the frontal lobe while the wild-feeling generating dopamine and serotonin are replaced with the oxytocin hormone.

Oxytocin creates a feeling of devotion to another individual. Rather than creating exciting emotions like serotonin, oxytocin instead creates a need to care for another human being. It is why friendships can last lifetimes, or a brother will stick up for a sister he otherwise wouldn’t care for. It is why marriages can span decades, and why parents will care for a baby that awakens them every morning long before they otherwise would want to.

Oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine are the chemicals behind love. However, scientists and romantics alike argue that there is far more behind this complex emotion. It is for this reason that psychologists and sociologists have begun studying the other aspects of love. They allow scientists to go beyond the physical, and explain the complex mental changes that occur.

To teens, love is almost entirely an emotion, and only an emotion. It is the brain processing the thrill of being mutually attracted to another individual. To adults, love is about the brain creating positive responses to the need to stay devoted and committed. How the brain works with emotion and chemical stimuli however, is still unclear.
Psychologists have worked to explain this interaction and have created three varying, but widely accepted theories. The first is the James-Lange theory, created by two scholars, William James and Carl Lange.

“In terms of how we experience emotion, James-Lange says that our cognitive understanding of emotion causes physiological stimulation,” describes Scott Hambrick. The theory states that all emotion, including love and attraction, are simple responses to physical changes. James-Lange states that your heart-rate increases as an automatic response by the nervous system when your senses perceive an individual of attractiveness. Then, emotions are created and perceived by your conscious mind.
Emotions, according to the theory, are a reaction to physical changes in the body, that are in return changes to events outside the body. Contrary to this is the Cannon-Bard theory. “Cannon-Bard says that the brain recognizes physiological changes and emotion at the same time and those two combine and form love,” saidHambrick.
In this theory, emotions are felt first, and a physical reaction follows. You see someone and your brain recognizes that you are attracted to them after processing both consciously and unconsciously the information gathered about them by your various senses. Your brain then creates both conscious and unconscious reactions, such as the release of serotonin, or a playful wink sent to someone across the room.

The final theory that attempts to explain emotion from a psychological angle is the theory of common sense. It is similar to the Cannon-Bard theory in that, “the brain cognitively understands and the body responds.” In this theory, the brain is in control. Here, one’s brain fully recognizes the input by its senses, and decides whether it feels attraction, and whether the emotions that go along with it will be felt. All three of these theories are widely accepted by the scientific community, and the correct sequence of events leading to love psychologically is still under debate.

Whichever theory is correct, it shows that science has begun to explain away love as it has so many other aspects of life. Disease was once the work of the Devil until Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria. The setting of the sun was caused by Apollo until Galileo and Copernicus showed it was the Earth circling a fiery ball in space. Today, love is still the work of Cupid, but science is persistently working to explain that away as well.