Three Cheers for Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Serotonin

Whenever I tell people that I am an atheist, reductionist and materialist and that I do not believe in after-life, soul or disembodied existence, the first reaction is always a strange look and after a while, perhaps since they know that arguing about the existence of God in an objective manner is fruitless, they ask, but Alok, do you believe in love? Have you ever been in love? As if, my not believing in soul has automatically turned me into a robot or a stone statue! Long lives the cliches of science fiction! Anyway, my answer to the first question is always the same: I believe in everything which has evidence and which can be verified and falsified by the scientific method of induction and as for love, there is enough evidence. As for the second question, if personal and first-hand experiences were required for knowing everything, Shakespeare would have been a murderer, misogynist, anti-semite, maniac, depressive, delusional, fool, knave and lots of other things which obviously he was not! So that is obviously absurd.

Now coming to the post that I wanted to write. I do believe in love as I believe in every other emotion, like anger, fear or disgust. The only thing I do not believe in, is that there is some mystical side to it, which can not be understood in an objective manner and that, it disproves or weakens the materialist philosophical position. Like all emotions, love is firmly embodied in our central nervous system and its chemical secretions. Love only appears different because it is far more intense and far more complex than other emotions (one reason might be that it always involves more than one person).

It is now a well accepted theory that like every other emotion, love is an evolutionary adaptation. It has been a successful adaptation because it enabled our ancestors to focus their courtship attentions on a single individual at a time, thereby conserving precious mating time and energy which as a result made it a winning strategy (as compared to the "f#$% and leave" strategy) as far as the struggle to pass on the genes to the next generation goes. But, then you will ask, why so much emotional upheaval that goes with love? How can something be a successful adaptation if it makes people suicidal and throws them in deep despair? Well the answer is because of the three chemical secretions that I wanted to write about.

Elevated levels of dopamine (and norepinephrine which is its derivative) in the brain produce extremely focused attention, as well as unwavering motivation and goal-directed behaviors. And there goes the explanation of compulsive mails, phone-calls and stalking, that is invariably found in every love affair. It also keeps lovers intensely focused on the beloved, often to the exclusion of all around them. Indeed, they concentrate so relentlessly on the positive qualities of the adored one that they easily overlook his or her negative traits (great men have wrote about it, look here and here). It has also some role to play in making lovers believe that the object of their desire is unique and unlike any other. Ever tried convincing a rejected lover that he/she can find someone exactly like her/him?

Dopamine is also responsible for other feelings that lovers report - including increased energy, hyperactivity, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, trembling, a pounding/beating heart, accelerated breathing and sometimes mania, anxiety or fear. This also explains why people in love become so dependent on their loved ones. Scientists have even found out that the feelings of dependency and craving that people feel in love are the same as those found in people addicted to alcohol or something else. So then, is love an addiction? Yes; most definitely it is--a blissful dependency and addiction when one's love is returned; a painful, sorrowful, and often destructive craving when one's love is spurned or when it remains unrequited.

In case of serotonin however, it is the low levels of the chemical which create troubles like obsessive-compulsive behavior and lover's persistent, involuntary, irresistible ruminations about their loved ones. In fact Prozac, the famous medicine used to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders, actually belongs to the class of medicines called SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) used to elevate levels of serotonin in the brain.

Now onto the most important question: How do I know all this stuff? And how do I know what people in love go through? Let me clarify. All this is based on purely objective reading of books, articles and other people's experiences. And anyway it is very un-Proustian and un-Nabokovian (two of my literary gurus) to use author's biography to understand what author has written. Two books that I will heartily recommend are Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love by Helen Fisher and The Evolution of Desire:The Strategies of Human Mating by David Buss. In fact I have blatantly plagiarised most of the stuff that I wrote above from the first book! If you have recently fallen in love and are enjoying the highs don't go near Buss's book. It will create unnecessary confusions. And if you think that understanding love and other mysteries of nature in a scientific manner destroys or even diminishes the pure and primitive magic of feeling, read Unweaving the Rainbow by Richard Dawkins.