“What happens when we fall in love is probably one of the most difficult things in the whole universe to explain. It’s something we do without thinking. In fact, if we think about it too much, we usually end up doing it all wrong and get in a terrible muddle. That’s because when you fall in love, the right side of your brain gets very busy. The right side is the bit that seems to be especially important for our emotions. Language, on the other hand, gets done almost completely in the left side of the brain. And this is one reason why we find it so difficult to talk about our feelings and emotions: the language areas on the left side can’t send messages to the emotional areas on the right side very well. So we get stuck for words, unable to describe our feelings.”
—Robin Dunbar, Evolutionary psychologist, on what’s happening in our brains when we experience love.
It’s part of a new collection of Big Questions From Little People, brilliant scientists from Lawrence Krauss to Richard Dawkins answering the questions of children. It’s brilliant. Check it out at Brain Pickings.
