Crazy in love

In yesterday’s column we highlighted new research showing that when you are in love your voice changes when you talk to your beloved. We also alluded to the fact that your behaviour changes in ways that could charitably be described as “bizarre” but more realistically labelled as “pathetic”. Hours spent moonily gazing into another’s eyes and giggling when you both reach for wine glass at the same time would under normal circumstances be enough to have you certified insane and carted away for some sort of therapy, possibly involving voltage. There are also several laws of basic human decency and natural selection that are transgressed by wantonly calling someone “wibbly bear” or “doodums” when they have a perfectly serviceable name like “Kate” or “Liam”. Then there are the superhuman leaps that people in love are able to perform when the phone rings and there is even a remote possibility that it may be the beloved calling. For better and worse there is no dispute that falling in love alters behaviour, but new research has shown that as far as your brain is concerned the effects are mostly “for worse”.

The study recruited subjects who had been in a relationship for less than six months. The purpose of this was to differentiate the research from other studies which looked only at people who were in love; these researchers wanted to study people who were newly in love.

The subjects were asked to listen to romantic music and to think of a romantic moment to intensify their feelings of “love”. The subjects also completed a questionnaire that was aimed at determining the intensity of their feelings of love.

The subjects then had to perform a number of tasks that involved discriminating relevant from irrelevant information as quickly as possible. The results showed that the more in love a person was the less able they were to focus on the task. It seems that cognitive control is lost possibly because mental reserves are being diverted to being a romantic loon. This contrasts with other research findings indicating that people who are in love long term actually develop greater cognitive control in order to maintain a long term relationship.

So be patient, that friend who has become a syrup-eyed freak because they have fallen in love will eventually return to the human race, possibly better than they were before.