When I first approached neuroscientist Parashkev Nachev to ask him to write a story about whether love is just a fleeting high fuelled by brain chemicals, I was looking for something bold and different. It was a tall order, given that more words have likely been written about love than any other subject in human history. To my surprise, he accepted the challenge, and came up with something that was both profound and surprising for our Life’s Big Questions series.

Scientists have investigated love from a number of different perspectives, ranging from hormones to brain activity. There has also been a lot of interesting work tracing the origin and evolution of love over time. But, according to Nachev, science has nevertheless failed to fully capture the essence of passionate, romantic love.

That’s because, if the neural mechanisms of love were simple, you should really be able to induce it with an injection or extinguish it with a scalpel. That isn’t the case. Evolution actually requires love to be complicated and mysterious – perhaps forever beyond the bounds of a perfect, scientific description. At the very least, there’s no need to be so cynical as to reduce love down to a single hormone.

If you’re determined to skip anything Valentines-related, check out our stories about slavery not being a crime in almost half the world’s countries and the devastating impact of losing your sense of smell. And it looks like Boris Johnson may be picking up tips from the Roman emperors.

Love,

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