LEARN THE SCIENCE OF LOVE

AH, LOVE. We’re all subject to its whims and impulses, from the tummy butterflies of that first flush to the physical pain of a broken heart.

It has the power to shape the parent-child relationship and we’ve felt its gentle warmth when we’ve looked at the face of a dear friend.

But what do we really know about love? The poets have long given us their thoughts but now science is getting in on the act too.

Thanks to ever-improving technology, scientists are able to look inside the human – and non-human – brain to find answers to some of our oldest questions on all things amorous.

They can pinpoint the neurochemicals that form the very foundations of love, calculate the equations that add up to sexual attraction and even suggest a scientific basis for why your husband forgets your wedding anniversary.

Oxford University anthropologist Anna Machin has scoured the studies and spoken to the leading experts for an enlightening new book, Why We Love: The New Science behind Our Closest Relationships.

So here’s all you ever wanted to know about that sweetest and strongest of all human emotions. Take 32 people who are romantically in love, 16 men and 16 women, and place them individually in an fMRI scanner, which maps brain activity.

Show them pictures of incidences of love, from the classic couple holding hands in front of a sunset