segunda-feira, maio 24, 2010

Cultural differences in how love is expressed don’t change the brain’s neurological reaction to romantic love

Because I like to indulge my brain in arguments on cultural vs biological, and above all cross-cultural vs bio... I really enjoyed the conclusion reported in the NY Times:

I think what we take away from this is that love is not merely a cultural construction,” Dr. Aron said. “What the study does suggest is that love is a powerful force in human life. What is going on at the deep level of the brain is pretty much the same everywhere. But of course how we talk and think about it, what we do to show it to others, etc., may well be shaped by culture.

Of course, if one then bothers to read the study or even just its abstract, one can conclude that 18 participants does not a population make... but anyways... brain science is brain science. I tend to appreciate how it makes highly complex behaviors seem so easy to deconstruct.... so their conclusion was "Our results show that midbrain dopamine-rich reward/motivation systems were activated by early-stage romantic love in Chinese participants, as found by other studies".

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