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I've been thinking a lot about how we define brain states or conditions in general --> We say someone is depressed if they have x number of qualities out of a list of y number of qualities in the DSM. So, if an individual has one less symptom than they should, we do not characterize them as depressed; even if they said they were depressed, we would say that they do not qualify. Although we do not have a defined set of characteristics that define love (as hard as we tried to develop one in class), I don't think that just because an individual's heart does not beat quickly around their significant other we would say that they're not in love. Does our utter failure to define love suggest that love is in a different category than other conditions/emotional/cognitive states? Or is it forcing us to recognize that our characterization of other conditions is too rigid, and should be more based on patient self report? Would we be transitioning to a more "floofy" form of science if we reduced the rigidity in classifying such conditions as depression/anxiety? 

I think that we should take into account the patient's personal, subjective experience more so than we do now. But, I'm questioning how this would work when we tried to do controlled research studies on different conditions (be they depression, love, etc.). I feel like we need some sort of criteria to define the population we are studying - otherwise, we can't make very many sound conclusions at all.