(suspenseful music)
(heart beating)
- Hey. (suspenseful music)
- Ah, the heart-pounding
panic look of love
when a couple first spies each other.
- But is it really
possible to fall in love
at first sight?
(electronica jingle)
- [Female Voiceover] A 2000 Gallup pole
found that while 75% of Americans believed
there is such a thing as one true love,
overall only 52% think love
could occur at first glance.
Specifically, that's
55% of men who believe
in love at first sight
compared to 49% of women.
- [Male Voiceover] But is
there a biological basis
to what might feel like
love at first sight
and does it indeed actually
occur in a split second?
Yes and yes, but it's hardly that simple.
- [Female Voiceover]
A meta-analysis study,
The Neuroimaging Of Love, conducted
by Syracuse University
professor Stephanie Ortigue,
found that 12 areas of the brain
work together to release euphoria-inducing
chemicals like dopamine, oxytocin,
adrenaline, and vasopressin.
These culminate in what's reported
as a feeling of love, and it can happen
as early as 0.2 seconds of visual contact.
- [Male Voiceover] That
love-struck feeling
also affects cognitive functions like
mental representation,
metaphors, and body image.
But why might love strike like lightening
at the heart of an unsuspecting human
in the first place?
Why not take it slow brain?
- [Female Voiceover] Helen E. Fisher,
a co-author of the study,
Reward, Motivation, And Emotion Systems
Associated With Early-Stage
Intense Romantic Love,
looks at the constellation
of neural systems
involved with feelings of love,
and she hypothesizes that marshaling
these resources quickly and efficiently
could be a mating shortcut.
- [Male Voiceover] Quote Fisher,
"Even love at first sight
"is a basic mammalian
response that developed
"in other animals and our ancestors
"inherited in order to speed
up the mating process."
- [Female Voiceover] And
if you think that lust
and not love may be behind
that tingly butterflies
in the stomach feeling, well just look
to the eyes and all will be revealed.
- [Male Voiceover] In a report called,
Love Is In The Gaze published
in Psychological Science,
male and female students
from the University of Geneva
viewed a series of black
and white photographs
of people they had never met.
In the first experiment,
participants looked
at photos of young heterosexual couples
interacting with each other.
- [Female Voiceover] In
the second experiment,
participants looked at
photos of the opposite sex.
They were then asked to quickly identify
the photos as either eliciting a feeling
of romantic love or sexual desire.
- [Male Voiceover] For both men and women
eye-tracking software revealed,
when participants reported
feelings of romantic love,
they tended to dwell on the face.
But when photos made
them feel lusty, well,
the gaze made its way down the body.
- [Female Voiceover] To
which we say, uh-doy.
As far as love at first sight goes,
well, it could just be
a trick of the brain,
or more specifically, your memory.
- [Male Voiceover] When you think back
to when you first met your current partner
you may recall this feeling
of love and euphoria,
but you may be projecting
your current feelings
back to the original
encounter with this person.
- [Female Voiceover] Which is all to say
that love at first sight is in the eye
and the memory of the beholder.
- So what about you, have you ever
experienced love at first sight?
- Do you even believe in it?
Let us know in the comments below.
Make sure to subscribe to
keep the videos coming,
and make sure to check out these videos.
They're about love too.
- You could argue that all of us
just need a few things in life
like food, shelter, and love.
Everything else is just decoration.
- [Male Voiceover] This
means that when in love
we may be both more likely
to obsess over a partner
and less able to regard
her or him objectively.
- A-romantics are not necessarily asexual
just as asexual identified people are not
necessarily a-romantic.
(chime)
