Why can't I get what I want? Why do we want one thing and get another? What does this very typical situation mean?

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Larry Young, Brian Alexander
Chemistry of love
A Scientific View of Love, Sex and Attraction

Larry Young, Brian Alexander

The chemistry between us. Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction

This edition is published by arrangement with Tessler Literary Agency and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency.

To every family in which love lives

People obey first of all instinct and only then the arguments of reason.

Theodore Dreiser. Sister Kerry

Introduction

He artistically threw up his hands and sighed doomedly: “What is this love?” – he asked a question that worries most of us. In this song (from his classical repertoire), a man is content with his “gray” life until love mysteriously penetrates into it, turning everything upside down and turning him into a fool.

And the economy of Las Vegas. The combination of erotic desire and the love that follows it is perhaps the greatest force on earth. People kill for love. We marry a woman who has children, and we happily take care of them, although, being bachelors, we had not the slightest desire to have offspring. We change religious views, or even convert. We are leaving warm Miami and moving to frosty Minnesota. We think and do things that we could not even imagine before, agree to a way of life that we could not imagine, and all this is under the influence of love. And when love ends, we, like the once contented hero of Porter's song, try to understand what went wrong and how we could have been such fools.

How does this happen? How do two complete strangers not only come to the conclusion that it would be nice to connect their lives, but decide that they must tie them up? How can a man say he loves his wife and yet have sex with another woman? Why do we stay in relationships even after our crush has passed? How can you fall in love with the wrong person? How do people find the right partner? How does love begin? What motivates mothers to care for their children? Why are our sympathies directed towards people of a certain gender? What, after all, does it mean to be a man or a woman – where and how is this idea born and formed?

When Larry began his doctoral research in neurobiology at the University of Texas Zoology Department, he didn't even think about looking for answers to all these questions. He was simply studying an unusual species of lizard. (We'll explain later what's unusual about these lizards.) The lizards themselves gave no reason to speculate about the mysteries of human love, but Larry began to have some ideas when he discovered that if he injected them with a certain substance, their sexual behavior would turn out to be entirely under his control. Just one molecule acting on the brain produced dramatic changes in their mating behavior. For Larry's scientific career, this discovery was a turning point. He was not the first to identify such properties in a substance. As you will soon learn, generations of explorers have followed this path. Through studying their work and conducting his own research, Larry (like other scientists) came to his understanding of social neuroscience - the science that studies our relationships with others. Gradually, he began to realize that the processes occurring in our brain could provide answers to those mysteries that had baffled people for so long. This book is an attempt to describe the picture he saw.

Until now, Plato, Porter and others like them have only shrugged their shoulders, trying to explain love, so trying to do what they failed may seem like a hopeless undertaking to some. And yet we, having joined forces, decided to try, because the results of new scientific research prove that Larry’s intuition did not let him down. Attachment, desire and love are not as mysterious as we used to think. In reality, love does not come and go. Complex loving behavior is controlled by just a few substances in our brain. The molecules of these substances affect certain chains of nerve cells and through them influence our decision-making, sometimes those that radically change our lives.

" The brain is made up of a number of structures that respond to a variety of neurochemicals. Contrary to popular belief, no region of the brain is “higher” or “lower” than any other. Behavior is not always formed as a result of the alternating, “stepwise” work of subordinate brain structures. It is rather a product of interaction between different parts of the brain. This does not mean that people give in to their irrational impulses, and we do not advocate such a point of view in the book. Reason really helps a person to pacify his desires, but we must also take into account the power of the natural engine. The brain circuits of desire and love have such a powerful effect that they easily suppress the rational principle, making our behavior the plaything of the driving forces of evolution. As Parvizi wrote, in the 19th century, “humans were believed to be fundamentally different from animals in their ability to consciously suppress instinctual desires through rational thought and pure reason. However, times have changed. For some time now we have accepted that truly human values, such as compassion and a sense of justice, have a biological basis and that animals have culture.”

This book is about both people and animals, and for good reason. Animals can tell us a lot about human love and our sexual behavior. It is not uncommon to hear statements along the lines of “animals are not people,” but this is mostly said by those who are trying to challenge the need for research into animal behavior. Yes, indeed, animals are not people. But when it comes to courtship and reproduction, animals - even those considered primitive - are influenced by the same substances that we are. These substances trigger certain behaviors in both animals and humans. Man has preserved elements of behavior similar to those found in the behavior of animals, because he has in his body the same elements as animals. chemical substances, and also because certain nerve cells were preserved in his brain (neurons), susceptible to these substances. The work of neurons ensures the appropriate behavior. Of course, in humans this entire complex system is somewhat different than in animals, it is tailored to his characteristics, but nevertheless it exists and it motivates him to action.

You may have watched programs on television about functional magnetic resonance imaging and other technologies used in human brain research. People are given music to listen to, asked to solve a math problem, or shown a snippet of a football match and receive stunningly colored images showing the response of a particular area of the brain, highlighted in green or red. These experiments are very valuable, and you will read about some of them in our book. However, magnetic resonance imaging and similar technologies are by no means the only or even the most powerful tool for studying behavior. They are used so often and with such enthusiasm only because they are one of the few ethical ways to look inside the living human brain. Unfortunately, the results of such tests allow us to make assumptions rather than confirm anything. On the other hand, new techniques for studying animals allow scientists to understand how external influences affect behavior, what substances are involved in these processes, and what happens in the brain. Experiments on animals, complemented by the study of humans using magnetic resonance imaging techniques, are helping scientists understand the mechanism of emotions such as fear and anxiety. Thanks to these discoveries, drugs have been created to treat human phobias and post-traumatic nervous disorders.

Some would argue that sex and love in humans are too complex and too mysterious to rely on animal research to explain our sexual and romantic behavior. We are ready for such objections. In this book you will learn that some animals, such as our humble little neighbor the prairie vole, exhibit behavior that is strikingly similar to humans. Voles form monogamous bonds. They "fall in love." They miss having lost their partner. They are in a hurry to return home. They have sex in response to chemical signals. They deceive their "spouses". Males display behavior characteristic of males, and females exhibit behavior characteristic of females, because from the moment the egg is fertilized until the moment when the animals become adults, their brains develop in a strictly prescribed way, just as happens with the human brain. It turns out that exactly the same genes that are responsible for the behavior of voles also influence our behavior.

Of course, we will talk about the latest discoveries made in the field of human research. You will learn that it has recently become possible to control human emotions using the very substances that were used in experiments on animals.

Although the issue of romantic love is important, the issues raised in this book go far beyond the topic of romantic relationships - they concern the nature of our society. What social neuroscience tells us about love applies to our lives in general and to the world in which we exist. People suffering from autism, social anxiety, schizophrenia, clearly avoid the slightest social interactions: These mental disorders destroy a person’s ability to enter into relationships with other people. Any society, any culture is a building built from bricks held together by social ties, starting from the first glance of a mother at her child, from the friendly handshakes and smiles of the buyer and seller, and ending with the first kiss of lovers. Therefore, everything that violates the strength of these connections has the same strong impact on society as on the individual.

The intention of presenting to you a grand theory that integrates the patterns of brain function, sex and love, a theory that provides answers to the questions that troubled ancient philosophers and Cole Porter, makes us a little timid, partly because the conclusions proposed in this book may turn out to be controversial. It is important to remember that much of what you read in these pages is just hypotheses about the nature of love. These hypotheses are based on scientific data, but have not yet been strictly confirmed within the framework of scientific theory. We consider our book a bold attempt to explain what previously seemed inexplicable. Ultimately, critics and readers will decide for themselves whether we have achieved our goals or not. At least, after reading this book, you will know much more about love, about why it should not be considered madness at all, but a mechanism of action inherent in us. However, we admit that this knowledge is unlikely to console you when you wake up one February morning in an unfamiliar snow-covered city somewhere in Minnesota.

Chapter 1
Brain: male or female?

A little over sixty years ago, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her book “The Second Sex”: “A person is not born a woman, but becomes one.” De Beauvoir's statement has become a universal motto for feminists and fashion designers. Probably, fashion designers do not fully understand the meaning that de Beauvoir put into this phrase. She believed that gender behavior is imposed on women by patriarchal society, and fashion designers believe that femininity can be imparted to a person by putting on an elegant dress and a pair of high-heeled shoes. Still, the essence here is the same: female and male behavior is the result of external influence. Meanwhile, information about children from the small town of Las Salinas in the Dominican Republic shows that Simone de Beauvoir was wrong.

Luis Guerrero was not going to challenge the opinion of the great French thinker - he was simply interested in one oddity. In the late 1960s, he, a young doctor working at a hospital in Santo Domingo, learned something unusual about several children from Las Salinas: namely, that the girls there were turning into boys. Why?

A native resident of the Dominican Republic, Guerrero in those years did not have the opportunity to engage in serious research into the phenomenon he encountered. However, he did not forget about it and, when he came to the United States to complete an internship in endocrinology at Cornell University Medical College, he interested local specialists in this topic. That's when researchers from the university went to Las Salinas to understand what was happening.

Traveling the one hundred and fifty miles from the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, to Las Salinas was no easy task. In the early 1970s, roads were mostly dirt. “On sharp turns, our cars creaked as if they were about to fall apart,” Guerrero recalls. Las Salinas was then a poor city. The roofs of the houses were covered with palm leaves instead of tiles. The main street, Calle Duarte, was a dusty road with no asphalt surface. The houses had no running water, and some had no toilets. People washed themselves in the river. Those men who did not work in the salt mines that gave the city its name cut down trees to make coal for the stove, or cultivated small plots of land. Even today there is nothing in the city that can attract visitors. The closest beach that has made the Dominican Republic a favorite destination for tourists from all over the world is fifteen miles from Las Salinas. A cemetery adjoins the city to the west. Behind it, old salt mines open up - sparkling scars on the body of nature. Now Calle Duarte is paved, most houses are covered with iron roofing and equipped with running water, but overall little has changed here.

A group of researchers from Cornell found that the two dozen children discussed above looked like completely normal girls at birth. They had female genitalia, including the labia and clitoris.

Naturally, their families raised them as girls. As they grew up, these girls began to wear headbands and dresses (if they had them, of course). They did household chores, which were usually entrusted to girls, while the boys walked outside and had fun as best they could. Then, after the onset of puberty, these girls grew a penis. This phenomenon has happened for many generations, so that the locals even came up with a name for it: guevedoces, or "penis at twelve". Such children were called "machiembra" (machihembra- “first a woman, then a man”), and in the end the girls really became men. Their labia turned into a scrotum with testicles. The timbre of the voice decreased, muscle mass increased. A photograph of one nineteen-year-old "machiembra" shows the defined musculature of a powerful middleweight boxer. Their behavior also changed. They tried to look like boys, joined the village boys in their games and began to court girls. Most got married. Some had children. The transition to adult malehood was not always easy, and differences remained between machiembra and other men throughout life. Their penises were slightly smaller than average, and their beards did not grow well. Hair did not fall out with age. In addition, they also had problems in communication: imagine what kind of bullying a teenage schoolboy is subjected to if his friends know that he was once a girl. And yet, after puberty, they became full-fledged men. But most importantly, they perceived themselves as men.

A year before the events described, psychologist John Money spoke before the annual meeting of the American Scientific Society with a report on a stunning experiment he had conducted. Back in 1955, Money stated that, in terms of gender, a newborn baby is a “blank slate.” He may have a male or female set of chromosomes, a boy's or a girl's genitals, however, Money argued, as if entering into a dialogue with Beauvoir, biological sex does not dictate a person's gender identity. Like Beauvoir, he insisted that the behavior characteristic of one or another sex is imposed parents, society and culture: nurture is stronger than nature.

For various reasons, approximately one in every thousand or two thousand babies in the United States are statistically born with ambiguous genitalia. A girl may have an enlarged clitoris, similar to a penis, while a boy may have undescended testicles and a micropenis (or no penis at all). Occasionally, a newborn turns out to be a true hermaphrodite, that is, it has both a female and a male reproductive system. Previously, in such cases, the question always arose: what to do? Usually they decided to leave everything as it was, but after 1973 many began to share and openly encourage Mani’s point of view. For a long time, surgeons operating on children with ill-defined genitalia have said: “It’s easier to dig a hole than to dig a post,” that is, creating a penis is much more difficult than creating a pseudo-vagina. Therefore, many doctors simply, using a scalpel, assigned “undecided” children to the female gender (including those who had a male set of chromosomes). Mani insisted that if in such cases lifelong treatment with hormones is carried out, accompanied by appropriate influence from society and parents, the child will not have problems. He gave doctors and parents the reasonable excuse they needed. Few doubted his words.

Mani was confident that his theory was correct, but there was no precise evidence that it was society that created a person’s gender identity. And how could such an experiment be carried out? Ideally, one should take a child with a normal chromosomal complement, normal genitals, and transform his genitals into the genitals of the opposite sex. This was in no way consistent with ethics. Moreover, at that time no one even thought of conducting observations of a “changed” child, comparing him with a control individual (a normal child living in the same environment). Such data could be useful to the cause. As often happens, chance helped.

In 1965, identical twins, two completely normal boys, Bruce and Brian, were born into the Canadian Reimer family. After an unsuccessful surgical operation on his foreskin, Bruce practically lost his penis, and the child’s parents turned to Money, who immediately realized that the misfortune that had happened to Bruce was an ideal situation for a control experiment. Bruce and Brian had the same genes, were born from the same mother and would grow up in the same house. Since Bruce was a normal boy before the unfortunate surgery, his male gender was not questioned, as it might have been if he had been born with unidentified genitals or a hermaphrodite. If Bruce behaves like a typical girl, and Brian behaves like a typical boy, no one will question Money's view that it is society, not nature, that has the main influence on human gender behavior.

The Reimers followed Mani's advice. Bruce had his testicles removed and was given hormones - estrogens. He was raised as a girl, named Brenda, and allowed Money to make a sensational claim that later became known as the “John-Joan case.” At a meeting of the American Scientific Society, Money declared that the experiment was a success. The experimental child's brother, Brian, behaved as an eight-year-old boy should behave: he was made, according to Money, “of crackers, rulers and batteries,” and loved active games. Meanwhile, Brenda, the charm itself, was working on dresses and dolls. After this scientific meeting, the journal Time reported that Mani in his speech presented "serious evidence in favor of women's rights advocates: traditional patterns of male and female behavior can be changed... Mani... is convinced that almost all gender differences are determined by culture, and therefore they are learned."

In 1898, early feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman stated in her work Women and Economics that “the female mind does not exist. The brain is not a sexual organ. We can just as easily talk about the female liver.” Second-wave feminists accepted Money's ideas as scientific proof that above the shoulder level, men and women have no significant innate differences. The results of the Las Salinas study cast doubt on such conclusions. Scientists from Cornell discovered twenty-four people with a "penis of twelve." They came from thirteen different families, and all but one of the families were descended from a woman named Altagracia Carrasco, who lived seven generations ago. Obviously, the phenomenon was based on genetics.

Judging by the chromosome set, the “Machiembra” were normal men. At birth, they had undescended testicles that remained in the abdominal cavity. What looked like labia was actually the beginning of a scrotum. The clitoris was not a clitoris, but a penis awaiting a signal to develop - a signal that was not received while the fetuses were growing and developing in the womb. In other words, “Machiembra” were born pseudohermaphrodites. They looked like girls, but were actually boys. The developmental deviation was caused by a mutation - an error in the gene where information about the synthesis of a protein called 5-alpha reductase is recorded. This protein is an enzyme - a substance that accelerates chemical reactions in cells. Thus, one mutation disrupted a number of interconnected processes.

In cells, no process begins on its own; to start it, the cell must receive a signal. Chemicals such as hormones act as signals. If such substances enter the cell from the outside, for example from the blood, they attach to its receptors - special structures located inside the cell or on its surface. Receptors, having perceived the signal, transmit it to genes, and the synthesis of one or another protein begins in the cell. Sex hormones (male testosterone and female estrogen) trigger the formation of genital organs. Information about the beginning of the formation of the prostate, penis and scrotum is transmitted by a sex hormone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), the above-mentioned enzyme 5-alpha reductase is responsible for its production. If the synthesis of 5-alpha reductase is impaired, then the synthesis of DHT will not occur. Testosterone, which is usually present in the blood of the fetus, attaches to the same receptors as DHT and could trigger the desired reactions, but it is not a powerful enough hormone to replace DHT. This is why a mutation in the 5-alpha reductase gene causes the machiembra fetal cells to not receive the signal to create male genitalia: the lack of DHT affects it. But when children reach puberty, their testicles begin to produce very a large number of testosterone. Its numerous molecules massively “attack” the receptors of the cells from which the penis and scrotum develop: testosterone is taken not by quality, but by quantity, and - please - “girls” turn into boys.

After puberty, DHT no longer plays such an important role in the body, but the cells of some tissues, including those that create hair and form the prostate, remain sensitive to it. In the machiembra body, the signal to these cells is very weak, so the pseudohermaphrodites from Las Salinas had poor beard growth, a small prostate, and a hairline on the head that remained throughout life. The hair follicles on a man's head are sensitive to DHT. Depending on your genetic makeup, sensitivity to DHT can lead to hair loss with age. (When you see an ad showing a man itching to pee or an attractive woman stroking her boyfriend's voluminous hair, thank "Machiembra" from Las Salinas. Drugs such as Avodart for prostate enlargement and Propecia for hair growth contain substances , reducing the activity of the enzyme 5-alpha reductase.)

Cornell scientists have solved one mystery, but stumbled upon another. If Mani is right and gender identity and associated gender behavior are shaped primarily by social influences, why then did young people who were raised as “girls” in their early years readily embrace their new masculinity? Yes, they faced some difficulties, but the gender change did not shock them. Apparently, it was not the newly acquired penis, but something else that told them that they had always been men. Of the original group of "machiembras" under the supervision of specialists from Cornell, only one person continued to play a "female" role after adolescence, and then, according to Guerrero, he most likely retained his role only to make it easier to establish sexual contacts with girls .

A year after appearing in Science Articles about children from Las Salinas Mani spoke in vivid colors about what awaits Brenda Reimer in the future. “She is now nine years old and has a female gender identity, which is in stark contrast to her brother’s male gender identity. Some of the patients [treated by Mani] are now teenagers or adults. Their example allows us to expect that the twin will act like a woman in terms of erotic behavior and sexual life. By continuing estrogen therapy, Brenda will maintain a normal feminine appearance and sexually attractive appearance. She can also become a mother by adopting a child.”

In 1979, famous sexologists Robert Kolodny, William Masters and Virginia Johnson published a remarkable book, “A Textbook of Sexual Medicine,” which emphasized the importance of Brenda’s transformation. " Child development This girl (from a genetic point of view, a boy) follows the female script with amazing accuracy, and her behavior is very different from her twin brother. The normality of its development is an important indicator that gender identity is plastic, and the contribution of social learning and environment to a person’s sexual self-determination is relative.” Mani's point of view has become medical truth. However, that same year, one of the Cornell team members, Julianne Imperato-McGinley, wrote an article for New England Journal of Medicine, which expanded on the topic of the first scientific report on 5-alpha reductase research. Imperato-McGinley stated categorically that the development of male gender identity depends primarily on whether the fetal brain is exposed to the sex hormone (testosterone) in utero, then during infancy and puberty, and not on how one is raised. child - as a boy or as a girl.

Ruth Bleier, a physician, professor of medicine, women's studies specialist at the University of Wisconsin, and prominent feminist who founded the Madison bookstore and café Lysistrata (named after the heroine of Aristophanes' play of the same name, who convinced Greek women to abstain from sex with men), wrote a devastating letter to the magazine. Bleier studied neuroanatomy at Johns Hopkins University. Citing Money's research, she expressed doubts about the "scientific objectivity and applicability of the methods" used by the Cornell team.

“The authors did not even try to find another explanation” for the transition of “machiembra” from female to male gender identity, “which is truly surprising,” she noted in her letter. Of course, girls were forced to act like boys, Bleier insisted, because their penises were growing! Everyone around them began to treat them like boys. To act like a girl in such a situation would require ignoring the expectations of others. In addition, she wrote, girls in this society are disadvantaged in their rights. They couldn't run and play like boys because they were doing housework. Any sane person will conclude that being a boy is much better. “My fear,” she added, “is that this study, like other studies filled with false conclusions, faulty logic and narrow interpretations, will be used ... as evidence that the fetal brain develops in a fixed pattern depending on the presence or absence of androgens.” ..."

A few months after Bleier's letter was published, fourteen-year-old Brenda Reimer, who longed to be a man, changed her name to David. Mani's great experiment not only failed - it turned out to be a complete disaster. While still playing Brenda, young Bruce Reimer hated dresses. When Brian refused to share his cars and construction sets with him, Bruce-Brenda saved his money and bought his own. He himself bought toy guns to play war with Brian.

The truth turned out to be inconvenient not only for Mani. In 1970, journalist Tom Wolf ridiculed the leftist political views promoted by the rich and socially successful. He called them "radical chic." Ten years later, “radical chic” became the culture of the majority. One of her most cherished dogmas was that innate differences between people constituted prejudice. “People became enamored with the idea of a DIY society,” recalls Dick Swaab, a pioneer in research into the connections between the brain and gender at the Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience. “Everything was homemade, and [Money’s theory] fit into that concept,” and David Reimer, Brenda’s ex, was a walking reproach to everyone. Perhaps this is why the Mani myth was debunked only seventeen years later. In 1997, sexologist-researcher Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii and Canadian psychiatrist Keith Sigmundson (who treated Bruce-Brenda under Money's supervision) published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine article that devalued Mani's triumph. Bruce-Brenda not only changed his name to David - he underwent surgery to remove mammary glands formed under the influence of estrogens, and surgically created a semblance of a penis and testicles. He started taking testosterone, got a job in a slaughterhouse, got married, and helped his wife raise her children. Unfortunately, he was never able to fully cope with the trials he endured. In 2004, David Reimer shot himself. This was his third, finally successful, attempt. However, even today, according to Diamond, Money has followers in the United States and around the world. His view is still reflected in some university gender studies programs, based on concepts such as the "social construction of gender."

Annotation

How does love arise? What makes two people who did not know each other yesterday decide today that they should spend their lives together? Why do spouses who have long lost mutual interest look for entertainment on the side, but do not want to get a divorce? Where does a young mother get the strength to stay awake all night, cradling her baby? Why are some people attracted to members of the same sex?.. At all times, poets and artists have sung the magic of love, which can make a person happy or make a person suffer. But only relatively recently have neuroscientists become closely interested in the question: what happens to our physiology when we are in love? What chemical processes are “responsible” for our love madness? The research results, which amazed the scientists themselves, will undoubtedly not leave the reader indifferent.

Larry Young, Brian Alexander

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Larry Young, Brian Alexander

Chemistry of love

A Scientific View of Love, Sex and Attraction

Larry Young, Brian Alexander

The chemistry between us. Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction

This edition is published by arrangement with Tessler Literary Agency and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency.

To every family in which love lives

People obey first of all instinct and only then the arguments of reason. Theodore Dreiser. Sister Kerry

Introduction

The idea of love as some kind of unsolved mystery may be rooted in the depths of centuries - it is so firmly rooted in the human consciousness. Plato called love “irrational desire.” When Cole Porter artistically threw up his hands and sighed doomedly: “What is this love?” – he asked a question that worries most of us. In this song (from his classical repertoire), a man is content with his “gray” life until love mysteriously penetrates into it, turning everything upside down and turning him into a fool.

Sooner or later, we all have to experience those exciting changes in behavior that occur when love enters our lives. The thirst for sex seems insatiable. We want it so much that we are willing to pay for the mere reminder of it, contributing to the financial well-being of Hugh Hefner, Jimmy Choo and the Las Vegas economy. The combination of erotic desire and the love that follows it is perhaps the greatest force on earth. People kill for love. We marry a woman who has children, and we happily take care of them, although, being bachelors, we had not the slightest desire to have offspring. We change religious views, or even convert. We are leaving warm Miami and moving to frosty Minnesota. We think and do things that we could not even imagine before, agree to a way of life that we could not imagine, and all this is under the influence of love. And when love ends, we, like the once contented hero of Porter's song, try to understand what went wrong and how we could have been such fools.

Behavior generated by love, including various symbols and rituals, seems to us a secret behind seven seals, since we have almost no power over it. At the same time, we prefer to think that deep instincts do not control us and the status of “king of nature” protects us from passions. After all, humans have frontal lobes - large, complex areas of the cerebral cortex. The possession of this highly intelligent instrument reassures us, and we console ourselves with the imaginary confidence that, in the process of long evolutionary changes, we have risen above our distant relatives - not particularly intelligent animals that obey instincts. Physician and neuroscientist Joseph Parvizi at Stanford University calls this human belief the “corticocentric bias.” The brain is made up of a number of structures that respond to a variety of neurochemicals. Contrary to popular belief, no region of the brain is “higher” or “lower” than any other. Behavior is not always formed as a result of the alternating, “stepwise” work of subordinate brain structures. It is rather a product of interaction between different parts of the brain. This does not mean that people give in to their irrational impulses, and we do not advocate such a point of view in the book. Reason really helps a person to pacify his desires, but we must also take into account the power of the natural engine. The brain circuits of desire and love have such a powerful effect that they easily suppress the rational principle, making our behavior the plaything of the driving forces of evolution. As Parvizi wrote, in the 19th century, “humans were believed to be fundamentally different from animals in their ability to consciously suppress instinctual desires through rational thought and pure reason. However, times have changed. For some time now we have accepted that truly human values, such as compassion and a sense of justice, have a biological basis and that animals have culture.”

Larry Young, Brian Alexander

The chemistry between us. Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction

This edition is published by arrangement with Tessler Literary Agency and Andrew Nurnberg Literary Agency.

To every family in which love lives

People obey first of all instinct and only then the arguments of reason.

Theodore Dreiser. Sister Kerry

Introduction

This book is about both people and animals, and for good reason. Animals can tell us a lot about human love and our sexual behavior. It is not uncommon to hear statements along the lines of “animals are not people,” but this is mostly said by those who are trying to challenge the need for research into animal behavior. Yes, indeed, animals are not people. But when it comes to courtship and reproduction, animals - even those considered primitive - are influenced by the same substances that we are. These substances trigger certain behaviors in both animals and humans. Man has preserved elements of behavior similar to those in the behavior of animals, because he has in his body the same chemical substances as animals, and also because certain nerve cells have been preserved in his brain (neurons), susceptible to these substances. The work of neurons ensures the appropriate behavior. Of course, in humans this entire complex system is somewhat different than in animals, it is tailored to his characteristics, but nevertheless it exists and it motivates him to action.

Just reading the title of the article made me want to scratch. How can we explain this? This is very similar to the yawning reflex - as soon as we see a person yawning, our mouth begins to stretch on its own, making our face not very attractive. To date, they have not been able to establish the principle of the occurrence of itchy sensations on the skin. It is clear that we itch due to some external influences on the skin, for example, mosquitoes or midges have bitten, or our bare skin has touched stinging plants. But which nerve cell processes are responsible for subsequent itching is not clear.

Probably not a day goes by without us scratching ourselves on some part of our body. Just like people, animals also love to scratch themselves. And it is not necessary that the latter have fleas. But the most negative thing about this matter is that, while receiving incredible pleasure from scratching, we do not notice how we tear the skin until it bleeds (in some cases).

And there are no obstacles in achieving the goal - we can smell even hard-to-reach places with some object without any problems. For this purpose, people with humor even invented a hand-shaped scratcher made of wood.

Itching of allergic origin has been learned to soothe with the help of various medical supplies. But medicine is still powerless in relieving symptoms from other sources.

Scientific experts were convinced that itching is pain, only in its other manifestation. But this contradicts the fact. After all, we avoid touching a painful wound, unlike scratching, which is sometimes accompanied by pain, but often does not stop us. After conducting a series of experiments on animals, and in particular on primates, scientists came to the conclusion that during the scratching process, a certain part of the spinal cord, or more precisely, its nerve cells, is blocked. These cells have the ability to transmit signals about itching to another brain - the brain. Accordingly, if some cells are blocked, others do not receive information. Now scientists worthy of admiration for their discoveries, they know how to eliminate itching without mechanical impact on disturbing areas of the skin. Sooner or later there will be a breakdown of any mechanism, household equipment, washing machine http://www.sos-service.ru/. Machines operating in close proximity to humans must meet the requirements of reliability standards.

I am glad that among people there will always be brave souls who, of their own free will, go to the experiments of scientists. Thanks to scientific research, we managed to find out the following. When introducing an antigen that causes an allergic reaction into the body of a person who agreed to conduct an experiment, scientists provoked itching. When a volunteer began to itch, he was observed using a non-destructive layer-by-layer examination of the internal structure of the object, through repeated exposure to it in various intersecting directions. Simply put, using tomography. It was discovered that when scratching, the activity of the areas of the brain responsible for memory and unpleasant sensations became very low, especially at the peak of the pleasure received. A person stops analyzing unpleasant sensations, and his memory is blocked, but the reaction to pain becomes more active - as a protective one, in order to avoid damage to the skin.

From all of the above, we conclude: first the skin begins to itch, then a signal is transmitted to the spinal cord, and then to the brain. But it's not always about the skin. Often it's in our minds. Sometimes just thinking about lice makes your head itch – it has nothing to do with the skin. Therefore, first you should find out the cause of the itching if ordinary scratching does not save you.

Ultimately, the answer to the question was never found. And for now all we can do is enjoy scratching our beloved body. But scientists still have a lot to think about.

...,” wrote Valery Okhlupin (it was he, although on the Internet the poem is often attributed to A.S. Pushkin). And he was right. Sometimes we really like people we can't be with. Who we want to be with, but cannot be for one reason or another. Who is completely unsuitable for us. Well, and further down the list. And all this is perceived almost as a disease for which there is no cure.

The inaccessible attracts, so it would seem that the situation is standard. However, people who constantly fall in love with someone unsuitable periodically think: “What is wrong with me?” Calm, just calm. This behavioral pattern, like many others, can be explained by science.

Curiosity. The information gap theory, created by George Loewenstein, an economist by training who made significant contributions to psychology, helps explain, among other things, how “wrong crush” occurs. It may be that when we can't get something, we allow curiosity to completely take over. And then the desire for an object or person turns out to be too strong, so it is simply impossible to explain it rationally.

Chase. People tend to be more satisfied with something that they have been particularly passionate about. It's the same story with falling in love. According to Elite Daily, our brains secrete when we're chasing something we really want, and the longer the chase, the more "pleasure hormone" we get. That's why sometimes we like people so much who don't like us (or like us, but).

Ego. Another popular reason why we continue to persecute people who don't care is ego. Because refusal in any case will be a huge blow to our ego, no matter how soft and diplomatic it may be. So when someone tells us “no,” we are willing to do anything to change it to “yes,” as quickly as possible.

Unavailability. The more unavailable a person seems, the more we want to be with him. The theory, tested hundreds of times in practice, also has a completely scientific explanation. Research shows that people who are in high social demand tend to seem more valuable to us (smart, attractive, purposeful - underline as appropriate). Is this person still busy? Then this value, psychologists say, can be safely multiplied by two.

Game element. Just as children instantly want to get what their parents forbid them to touch, so we are attracted to people whom we cannot get. The reasons can be very different - a stamp in the passport, polar views on life, or a banal lack of sympathy from one of the parties. However, we literally become obsessed when we learn that we can’t have “that particular person” right now, so we spend a lot of time and effort trying to please someone. Moreover, quite often at the end of the game the winner discovers with horror that he no longer needs the main prize.

Unpredictability. In the case of falling in love, the situation can develop in two ways: either we get this person, or, which is logical, we don’t get it. We don't know what the result will be - and this is what especially attracts us. According to research conducted by Gregory Burns, the human brain responds to unpredictability in the same way as it does to pleasure. Is it possible to replace it with chocolate? The question is rhetorical (and so far, unfortunately, unexplored).

home » Loans » Why can't I get what I want? Why do we want one thing and get another? What does this very typical situation mean?

Larry Young, Brian Alexander Chemistry of love A Scientific View of Love, Sex and Attraction

Introduction

Chapter 1 Brain: male or female?

Larry Young, Brian Alexander
Chemistry of love
A Scientific View of Love, Sex and Attraction

Chapter 1
Brain: male or female?