Even science, the indisputable paradigm of human rationality, is interested from time to time in the vicissitudes of the heart – and we are referring to feelings, not to some type of heart disease. So no other date can be more opportune than Valentine’s Day to echo one of these studies, which, in this case, has focused on the physiological mechanisms that love provokes in us .
Scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) belonging to the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC) – specifically, the Human Psychophysiology and Health Laboratory – have prepared a study of these characteristics, carrying out a measurement of the effects that love produces in people both centrally (that is, cerebral) and peripherally (cardiac, muscular, and sweating) .
According to the results of this study, when we fall in love and contemplate a photograph of the face of the loved person – also in the case of other loved ones, such as the father or mother – what scientists from the UGR have called ‘affective tachycardia’, which is that our heart suffers an initial deceleration –the heart rate decreases for a few seconds– and then accelerates rapidly . Likewise, contemplating the face of our beloved causes that, from the first second and a half, our sweating increases.
It also activates the facial zygomatic muscle, responsible for the smile . Curiously, this pattern is generated more in the case of women than in men, “probably due to cultural issues, since they have a greater facility to express their emotions than they do”, points out the University of Granada to through a statement. Regarding brain activity, it should be noted that this is much higher if we look at the photo of people we love than if they are the portrait of strangers.
The experiment, with ‘neutral’ facial photos
To carry out the study, the scientists worked with a sample made up of students from the UGR’s Faculty of Psychology – men and women between 20 and 29 years old. They had to take a photograph, with specific size characteristics and in black and white, of their father or mother and their partner (only if they had been in a relationship for at least six months).
According to CIMCYC researchers Jaime Vila Castellar and Pedro Guerra Muñoz, who have spent years analyzing the physiological patterns that positive emotions produce in us, these facial photos had to be neutral, that is, they should not show any emotional expression of joy or sadness. that could interfere with the reaction of the participants.
On the day of the experiment, they placed sensors on the participants’ faces, heads and hands to monitor their central and peripheral physiological activity and showed them photographs of five different faces at random and for four seconds: two belonged to loved ones, two they were from strangers and one was from a baby (used as a control group).
“Knowing how the body and our brain react to these images allows us to know the mechanisms that activate positive emotions and to be able to find out or explain why these long-term emotions are positive for health” , points out Professor Jaime Vila Castellar.
In addition to the aforementioned results, the researchers found that love is a protector against stress : when students received a shock – through a loud noise induced through headphones – while they were viewing a photo of a loved one (either father, mother or partner), the shock that occurred was much less than when it occurred and they were not looking at the image.
Image: UGR
