Day: October 28, 2023

For centuries, we’ve been convinced that love is a feeling that arises from the heart. But the reality is that when we’re in love, it happens primarily in our brains, producing hormones like adrenaline and oxytocin, which are associated with feelings of excitement and bonding.

You can tell you’re falling in love when your significant other takes up major real estate in your thoughts – even when you’re not with them. Kang says that when she fell in love with her husband, she’d think about their conversations while at work and reread his text messages. She’d also spend time looking at photos of them and daydreaming about their future together.

In a recent experiment, scientists put 37 people who were madly in love into an MRI scanner to see what their brains looked like when they were experiencing those intense romantic feelings. They found that when love is arousing, certain parts of the brain are activated – the same areas that respond to cocaine and other rewards.

According to Sternberg’s model, which divides love into three components, namely intimacy, passion, and commitment, people experience two basic types of love:

Intimate/companionate love (think fidelity) and ecstatic/adventurous love (think romance). Complementary love helps us feel stable and connected with others, while passionate love is about our desire for companionship and adventure. These different aspects of love are what help our relationships last. But they can also make it challenging to figure out what makes a relationship “good.” That’s why researchers are studying how couples nurture their loving relationships and keep them happy over the long haul.

Movies come in all shapes and sizes, offering heartwarming comfort, iconic scares, big laughs and pulse-pounding suspense. Some of them change the world, becoming cultural touchstones or milestones, while others transcend genre to become the best of their kind – a universally acknowledged benchmark of cinematic achievement. But what makes a movie one of the best ever made? It depends on a wide range of factors.

A movie’s content, for example, can include plot points, characters and setting, as well as how the director’s style contributes to the film’s overall success. A discussion of cinematography could also be important, considering things like how a camera’s angle and distance to the subject influences its effect, or how a scene’s lighting choices create a sense of drama or tension.

It also helps to think about the movie’s message, whether it tackles a topic of social concern or simply seeks to entertain and engage its audience in a unique way. In addition, it’s helpful to consider whether a film has any historical resonance or relevance.

For instance, William Friedkin’s 1973 horror masterwork The Exorcist has earned a reputation as a gore-fest with memorable scenes such as pea-soup vomit and crucifix abuse, but it’s the bleak portrayal of humanity’s nastiness that gives the movie its enduring chills. Similarly, Daniel Plainview’s milkshake-drinking vampire incarnation in Paul Thomas Anderson’s cult classic is terrifying on a visceral level, while its deeper exploration of human mortality and morality keeps it from being merely exploitative.