Brain Scans Show Some Remain Deeply In Love For Decades

The brain scans tell the story of love.

Stony Brook University researchers looked at the brains of Bernstein and 16 other people who had been married an average of 20 years and claimed to be still intensely in love. They found that their MRIs showed activity in the same regions of the brain as those who had just fallen in love.

Social psychologist Arthur Aron says that researchers simply didn't believe those who claim to feel intensely for each other after decades of marriage.

"But in survey after survey we always have these people who have been together a long time and say they are intensely in love. It was always chalked up to self-deception or trying to make a good impression," he said.

What I'd like to know: Do the people who maintain this feeling for decades carry genetic variants that have coded for them to bond much more heavily than the average person? I'd like to see these people compared with people who've been divorced at least twice using vasopression and oxytocin genes for starters. The delivery of vasopressin receptor gene therapy into the ventral pallidum of male voles made them more monogamous. In the future I expect some ladies will surreptitiously deliver gene therapy into the brains of their boyfriends to get them to stay around. But if the guy is already playing the field he might bond to another women he's bedding. So use of this sort of therapy requires careful staging to achieve the desired outcome.

Another future option: Women who want to stay in love forever who have the bonding brain genes could test prospective mates to choose guys who have the genes that'll keep them in love for a long time.