From: Patrick Wilken (patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au)
Date: Sun Aug 15 1999 - 18:29:30 MDT
>I do hope these clever chaps can figure out a way to give my
>uploaded self that particular flood of endorphines, or some reasonable
>substitute.
Well if you want LOVE try lowering your serotonin:
===================================
THE TELEGRAPH - Connected*2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
You must be crazy to fall in love
FALLING madly in love may really involve a degree of mental illness, according
to a team of Italian psychiatrists.
Researchers have discovered striking biological similarities between people who
are lovesick and sufferers of obsessive compulsive disorder.
OCD is a mental condition characterised by obsessive, intrusive thoughts. A
patient with the condition feels compelled to repeat mundane activities, such
as washing hands or checking that doors are locked.
Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatrist at the University of Pisa, carried out
research in 1990 which showed that OCD was linked with low levels of a brain
messenger chemical, serotonin.
Struck by the way the persistent one-track thoughts of OCD sufferers mirrored
the musings of people in love, she set out to see if there were biochemical
similarities between the two. Her findings, published in Psychological Medicine
and reported in New Scientist, show clearly that there are and that both the
OCD and in-love volunteers tested had about 40 per cent less serotonin than
normal.
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Patrick Wilken
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness
Board Member: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://www.phil.vt.edu/ASSC/
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