This is your brain on love

There are many many crazy implications in this article ("Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain") in the NYTimes. One is the idea that under an MRI, love looks like a psychosis, a neurosis, a sickness of the brain. Another is the implication that there is an area of the brain that is linked to long-term relationships?!? And then there's this:

In a series of studies, researchers have found that, among other processes, new love involves psychologically internalizing a lover, absorbing elements of the other person's opinions, hobbies, expressions, character, as well as sharing one's own. "The expansion of the self happens very rapidly, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences there is, and short of threatening our survival it is one thing that most motivates us," said Dr. Aron, of SUNY, a co-author of the study.

To lose all that, all at once, while still in love, plays havoc with the emotional, cognitive and deeper reward-driven areas of the brain. But the heightened activity in these areas inevitably settles down. And the circuits in the brain related to passion remain intact, the researchers say - intact and capable in time of flaring to life with someone new.

Hmm...