Everyone knows how it feels to fall in love. One becomes dreamy, unequal and impossible to think of anything but the object of passion. It seems that all your heart is filled with magic feeling. But American scientists researched that the source of love is in the head and not in heart.

A several groups of scientists decided to study the problem of love and finally find out what is love, how and why it starts and how long does it last.

There was a hypothesis that feelings dull after 15 months of a relationship and love lasts not more than three years. Specialists from Stony Brook University disproved that statement. They compared brain impulses of couples married for 20 years and those who just fell in love. Biochemical analysis showed that level of dopamine, which is the pleasure hormone, was about the same in all cases. In the view of scientists, that fact proves that love doesn't die in three years. In three years people start doubting if they have had chosen the right person. Sometimes it causes the end of the relationship.

But other scientists say that this comparison is wrong. Young couples are in love and being in love is different from real deep feeling of love. People in love experience a kind of emotion concerned with sexuality and romantic expectations. This emotion tends to fade away or become real love with time. Real love is first of all attention and care about your partner and it has almost nothing to do with hormones.

Here is one more of the research findings: Love works chemically in the brain like a drug addiction. "Romantic love is an addiction; a wonderful addiction when it is going well, a horrible one when it is going poorly," said Helen Fisher, a researcher and professor at Rutgers University. "People kill for love. They die for love."

By the way hormones affect not only duration of love. They actually start it. Larry Young, of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta said: "It has a biological basis. We know some of the key players". The group of scientists found out that a great role in falling in love play special neurochemical agent oxytocin. This agent takes part in early relations of child and mother.

Besides, oxytocin helps to prevent family quarrels. Experimental results showed that oxytocin dose shorten number of aggressive behavior. Young's invention has not only theoretical value. Now scientists work on a new class of oxytocin based medicines which will be able to cure heartbreaks.

Alex Todd