This is your brain. This is your brain dating. Any questions? Yes, actually about a million. Do you want to know the answer to all of them? It depends. Recently there was a Time Magazine article on attraction and flirting and pheromones and romance and love and all that other crap. If you really want those answers, I suggest you read this article.The following is my condensed version and analysis of snippets of the parts of the article that I actually read. i.e. the captions. Or as I will heretofore refer to as my thesis for my pretend advanced degree in cultural anthropology.

I have had amateur theories for years in regards to the mating/dating/dissing ritual, some of which I have laid out here. (I said laid) They are by no means based in any kind of scientifically approved research except for the stuff that is in my head. It turns out; I am totally on to something.

One of the little tidbits that I gleaned, ok, my associate, a.k.a. sister Caitlin, pointed out to me, while SHE was reading the article in Time was that the attraction that we find ourselves in towards another person actually exists mainly in our heads. In other words, it’s not the way the object of your latest desire makes YOU feel, it’s the way he or she makes your brain feel. And vice versa. Perfect. All this time I had been trying to follow my heart. It turns out my heart is just a plain old organ pumping blood and other substances (legal and prescribed) through my bod. My brain is where the action is.

Now there are some serious chemical reaction things that occur when you fall in love, or when your brain thinks you have fallen in love. They involve dopamine; serotonin and another one that looks like it could be pronounced Nora Ephron. The study published in Time was all brain scan-y and control groups etc. involving regions of the brain, blah blah blah. I am not a scientist. I just play one on TV. So I won’t DELVE into the “details”.

One thing that was pretty awesome is the description of the region that lies deep in the center of our brains, where all the primal urge stuff gets its freak on. Or also maybe not so commonly known as the reptilian brain which evolved something like 65 million years ago (sorry Bible people). The best part is that during one such science-y scan showed that the body and the TAIL of the primitive region became particularly active when the subject gazed adoringly at a photo of their sweetheart. Cool. And ew. And hello, new meaning to the expression “blanking some tail”.

The rest of it talked about the reward system in our brain and how romantic love is addictive, much like chocolate, and a monitoring system for the pursuit. Lots to think about. I deduced that the passion that I feel for, say, shoe shopping is inextricably linked to the dopamine disco party in my head that is similar to what happens when your brain falls in love. Right on. I like all of this stuff. It totally makes sense. Except for a nagging vision of Mario from Donkey Kong at the controls of my monitoring system. Anyway, my brain recently met another brain that it totally got along with and laughed at each other’s jokes. In conclusion it was a pretty amazing feeling. For my brain. Come to think of it, the rest of me too. Who knew?