Page 16 - Advanced Romance

Advanced Romance* 13
a location, an address, for love, as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which Fisher came to think of as part of our own endogenous love potion.
In the right proportions, dopamine creates exhilaration, focused attention, and motivation to win rewards. It is why, when you are newly in love, you can stay up all night, watch the sun rise, run a race, ski fast down a slope ordinarily too steep for your skill. Love makes you bold, makes you bright, makes you run real risks— which you sometimes survive, and sometimes you don’t.12
Balderdash! Romance comes from the caudate nucleus of the brain? And the ventral integument? My romantic allegiance bristles at simplifying heavenly love to such mundane, clumsy words. And of course, I’m justified in thinking that. Great swaths of the human body and mind are obviously involved in love. These are just areas Fisher could read in her MRI.
And of course, even National Geographic assertions will not dent the devotion of romantics. Nor will Fisher’s appearances on 20/20, PBS, the BBC and many other distinguished programs. They shouldn’t. Many of us were inspired by National Geographic’s nude pictures of various native tribes early in our romantic careers. Yet you can still be a romantic and believe that dopamine,