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Claire Ceriani's picture

I thought this was an

I thought this was an interesting topic to choose, and one I would not have thought of for a class like this.  I was especially interested in our discussion about defining love.  I agree with Megan.  We do need to have some sort of definition of love in order to study it scientifically.  The only way we can make comparisons across studies is if we have a common understanding of exactly what it is we're studying.  But I think from neurological perspective, all we can ever really define is which parts of the brain seem to be involved in the experience of love.  I don't think we'll ever be able to come up with a single description of what love is, since it clearly varies from culture and culture and person to person.  We also discussed how love in a relationship may change over time.  This means that we'll be defining love based on the brain areas we observe as active, but we'll decide if a person is in love if the appropriate brain areas are active.  There's no objective starting point.  For this kind of research, you have to allow for some subjectivity.  You have to take the word of your subjects when they define their own emotional experiences.  If someone says they're in love, but their MRI doesn't look "right," do you decide not to believe them and remove them from the study?  Or do you take their word for it and try to explain the differences you see?  At some point, you have to make a completely subjective choice.

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