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All In Your Head
Striving to find a “soul-mate” is a common goal amongstmany people. The
soul mate a person looks for has to be compatible in manyways and at least to me
the most important factor in a person is his or herpersonality. People fall in love
with a person’s ‘self’, with whom they are inside, or atleast this is what I used to
believe. After some research and from what I’ve gatheredfrom class, the process of
finding a ‘soul-mate’, I would argue, is a biologicalprocess.
An innocent peck on the lips by herprince awakes the princess from her
sleep. The magical kiss from this classic fairy tale,“Sleeping Beauty”, awakens in
most people the importance of a simple kiss. Most humansstrive to find someone
they can have for them selves, to love and to kiss.Kissing is one of the most intimate
acts a person can participate in and by many people it isconsidered more intimate
than any other acts of intimacy such as holding hands oreven sex. When one finds
the right person to kiss there is an exchange of scent,texture, taste and most
importantly emotion (Walter 1). People strive for intimacy and this is why there is
an innate need for kisses.
In The Kiss by Christopher Nyrop thedifficulty of defining the meaning
behind a kiss is stated, “It seems to me even to offercertain points of interests,
inasmuch as it is by no means so easy as people mayimagine to define what a kiss
is” (3). Inthe body, a kiss triggers signals that go to the brain. These signals
transmit messages of sexual excitement, motivation,feeling of closeness, and
euphoria (Walter 1). These are characteristics that makea kiss as magical as it can
be. What about bad kisses? A bad kiss can end arelationship before it even begins.
This could be because the chemicals released by the twopeople aren’t attracted to
each other. So, the romantic view of a kiss can be acomplete misconception. Going
back to Emily Dickinson’s idea of a person’s braincontrolling everything, this idea
can now include an act as intimate as a kiss. We like tobelieve that one feels with
the heart or a soul, and thinks with the brain. Thebiological activity observed with
kissing says otherwise.
In a study done with collegestudents about the evolutionary perspective of
sex differences in romantic kissing, the results showedthat females place a greater
emphasis on kissing as a mate assessment device (Gallup).If we consider kissing as
a biological act then this evolutionary perspective makessense. People kiss to
determine if there is a future with the selected mate. Ifthe chemical exchange
during the act of kissing isn’t satisfactory, the personwill move on to find someone
else to mate with in order to pass his or her genes tothe next generation.
In this same experiment by Gallup,Harrison and Hughes, a survey about the
importance of a person’s breath while trying to decide tokiss them or not or to
continue kissing them showed that both sexes consider aperson’s breath in this
decision. Though females value this factor more thanmales, both sexes dislike the
idea of kissing someone with very bad breath (Gallup). Areasonable assumption
could be that the bad breath is interfering with thechemicals that attract each other
on the lips. Hence while the chemicals might want to kisseach other, the bad breath
might be stimulating the parts of the brain that arerepulsed.
In another survey participants wereasked if they would consider having sex
with someone without kissing taking place. Over half themale participants said they
would, while only one in seven females said they would(Gallup). This is another
indication of how important kisses are in intimate actsand at the same time
emphasizes the importance of getting to know a personbiologically and
neurologically before participating in an act that canresult in reproduction.
Focusing more on the brain aspect ofkissing, it makes sense that kissing
someone results in a large number of neurons firing allover the brain. The lips are
densely populated with sensory receptors, which explainwhy so many neurons
work in the act of kissing. These neurons, sensoryreceptors, and brain activity in
general are the reasons for a kiss ending up good or bad,not how romantic the
environment is or whether it’s a dream kiss under therain.
In Emily Dickinson’s poem TheBrain—is wider than the Sky – the importance
of the brain is emphasized. As the title indicates,Dickinson gives the human brain
enough power to imagine up the sky and the whole worldand everyone in it. “For—
Put them side by side/ The one the other will contain/With ease—and You—
beside.” Dickinson encompasses in this poem the power ofthe brain. Dickinson
would agree that the signals going to the brain from thesensory receptors on lips
are the reason for a person believing that they feelemotions towards the person,
almost as if the kiss is magical, like in a fairy tale.
So, a kiss is a complex biologicalprocess that can result in either liking or
disliking of a person. This decision of like or dislikeof a kiss is determined by the
message sent to the brain by sensory receptors on thelips, not a fairy tale romantic
story. But, does it really matter? In the fairy tale, thekiss happened, more or less, the
same way it would or should have in real life, at leastbiologically speaking. So the
fairy tale kiss was great though biological, and therereally isn’t a reason why a
purely biological rather than an emotional kiss can’t beenjoyed just as much it is in
the fairy tale.
Work Cited
Gallup, Gordon; Harrison, Marissa; Hughes, Susan. “SexDifferences in Romantic
Kissing Among College Students: An EvolutionaryPerspective.” Evolutionary
Psychology. 2007. 612-617. Epjournal. Feb 20, 2009.
<http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP05612631.pdf.>
Nyrop, Christopher. The Kiss. London, 1901.
Walter, Chip. “Affairs of the Lips.” Scientific AmericanMind February/March 2008:
24-29.
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neurobiology of kissing