Romance in your veins
Thousands of songs, poems, novels and movies explore the link between obsession, compulsion and romantic love. So, too, does at least one published scientific study. Donatella Marazziti, Alessandra Rossi and Giovanni B Cassano of the University of Pisa, and Hagop S Akiskal, of the University of California San Diego, undertook the first thorough biochemical investigation of this complex and delicate question.
The four doctors wrote that “it is reasonable to hypothesise that [falling in love] must be mediated by a well-established biological process … [We set out to] examine the relationship between the serotonin (5-HT) transporter, the state of being in love and obsessive-compulsive processes”. This chemical - serotonin (5-HT) - is involved in regulating all sorts of human behaviour, including appetite, sleep, arousal and depression. Doctors Marazziti, Rossi, Cassano and Akiskal asked two simple questions…
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.