The bit about chocolate isn't really surprising either

[avram]

New developments in the neurology of love:

When you first fall in love, you are not experiencing an emotion, but a motivation or drive, new brain scanning studies have shown.

I wasn’t aware that motivations and drives weren’t considered emotions. I guess they’re lower on Manslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Early on in a relationship, the images showed that the brain seems to be very focused on planning and pursuit of pleasurable reward, says Fisher, mediated by regions called the right caudate nucleus and right ventral tegmentum. The same regions become active when a person enjoys the pleasure of eating chocolate, she adds.

There are also patterns that resemble aspects of obsessive compulsive disorder. [...]

Color me surprised. Then erase that color, ’cause I’m not surprised at all!

The team has since moved on to examining the final phase of romance. "We are now looking at people who have just been rejected," says Fisher.

Contact Helen Fisher, Anthropology Department, Rutgers University, all fifty or so of you.