CRI听力：Love really Is Blind

Anchor: In the play "The Merchant of Venice," William Shakespeare claims "love is blind." Now neurobiologists using advanced brain mapping technology are gathering new evidence that seems to back up his claim. Our reporter Zhang Wan has the story.

Reporter: As Valentine's Day approaches, some people are turning their thoughts to the question, "What is love?" They may soon arrive at an answer simpler than they think.

New advances in medical technology mean the answers to these mysteries of love are becoming less mystical and more logical.(www.hxen.net)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures tiny metabolic changes that take place in an active region of the brain. The brain scans provided by the imaging allow physicians to determine precisely which part of the brain is handling critical functions such as thought, speech, movement and sensation, and they say that also includes love.

Semir Zeki, a professor of neuroesthetics at the University College in London has studied how the brain reacts to emotional stimuli, including romantic love.

"It is surprising because romantic love, really, is all engaging, in the sense that it modifies our behaving (behavior), our way of behaving. We want to get dressed better, we want to look better, we are concerned about the person we love, so one would have thought that a large, a very large part of the brain would be involved, but it turns out that there is a sort of basically four, five areas which are especially active when one is in love."

Most importantly, love stimulates parts of the brain that suppress our critical faculties. According to Zeki, romantic attachment activates regions in the brain's reward system.

These coincide with areas that deactivate faculties associated with negative emotions, social judgment and the assessment of other people's intentions and emotions. This, Zeki believes, explains the power of love to motivate and exhilarate.

However, psychologists warn that Zeki's studies might lead some people to feel that "soul" matters have become too mundane. Dr. Linda Papadopoulos says,

"All of those things which kind of belong to the soul now seem to belong to the body. The truth is, it's an interaction of both. Yes, those chemicals are involved in making you fall in love, but so is the way your father treated you. So is your belief about yourself and how much love you think you deserve. So are your beliefs about romanticism and what you consider attractive, or unattractive. So it's not as if we're throwing away all the Valentines cards and the flowers and saying you spray on some pheromones and that's it - you're in love, or out of love, as the case may be. But what we are saying is, there is a reason that you get that heart beat, there is a reason that you get that feeling with some people."

If our brains do trick us into thinking the people we love can do no wrong, the poets may well be right to claim that love is blind.

What the scientists haven't quite worked out yet is exactly what makes us lose our senses when we fall in love in the first place.

For China Drive, I am Zhang Wan.