Why We Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

the head beneath the cortex, is more than twice the size of the amygdala in apes. 29 This brain region plays a central role in generating fear, rage, aversion, and aggression; parts produce pleasure, too. With this brain capacity for generating strong, often violent emotions, we humans have the ability to link our drive to love with an enormous collection of feelings.
    We are also uniquely endowed to remember “him” or “her.” “Memory, of all the powers of the mind, is the most delicate and frail,” wrote Ben Jonson. ’Tis true. Just try to memorize a long poem or remember what you ate a week ago today. To help us remember, however, nature contrived to make our hippocampus, the brain region we use to produce and store memories, almost twice as big as that of the great apes. 30 This brain region exquisitely recalls the feelings that accompany memories as well. With this remarkable factory and storage bin, the hippocampus, we humans are able to recollect the smallest details about “him” or “her.”
    But of all the brain parts that evolved to intensify the experience of romance, undoubtedly the most important is the human caudate nucleus. As you may remember, the caudate became active as our lovesick subjects gazed at the photos of their beloveds. This brain region is associated with focussed attention and intense motivation to win rewards. And it is twice as large in humans as in our closest kin. 31 As the caudate enlarged among our Homo erectus ancestors, it may have intensified the urge to seek and win a sweetheart.
    Exactly when a primitive form of animal magnetism finally evolved into human romantic love—with all its complex thoughts and feelings—no one knows. But many scientists now think that all parts of the human brain (except the cerebellum) expanded in unison. 32 We know when this began: some 2 million years ago. A million years ago, Homo erectus peoples had considerably larger brains. By 250,000 years ago, some of our Homo sapien ancestors had skulls as big as yours and mine. And by 35,000 years ago, their brains had taken our modern shape.
    Humanity had emerged from its jungle crucible. Someday we may lift off from Earth entirely and soar toward the stars. These voyagers will carry in their heads exquisite mental machinery born on the grass of ancient Africa over a million years ago. Among these special talents will be our wit, our flair for poetry, the arts, and drama, a charitable spirit, and many other courting traits, including the astonishing human ability to fall head-over-heels in love.
    Capricious Love
    “But I am tied to very thee / By every thought I have; / thy face I only care to see, / Thy heart I only crave.” 33 In the mid-1600s, Sir Charles Sedley vividly expressed this intense drive to love another. But alas, this feeling isn’t always joyful.
    As you know, romantic love does not necessarily go hand in hand with the urge to attach to a mating partner over a long period. You can fall in love with someone from a different walk of life whom you never wish to marry. And you can feel romantic passion for one person while you feel deeply attached to another, usually a spouse. Moreover, you can have sex with someone for whom you feel no romantic love, even feel romantic passion for one individual while you copulate with another. What madness—to be socially or sexually entwined with one person and wildly in love with someone else.
    Why has the brain circuitry of romantic love become unlinked from feelings of lust and long-term attachment?
    I think love’s capriciousness is part of nature’s plan. If a Homo erectus man had one wife and two children and meanwhile fell in love with a woman from a different band and secretly gave her two more young, he would double the number of his descendants. Likewise, an ancestral woman who was wedded to one man yet became entranced by another might bear her sweetheart’s baby and/or acquire extra food and protection for the children she had