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Falling in love as obsessive compulsive disorder :

When you first fall in love, you are not experiencing an emotion, but a motivation or drive, new brain scanning studies have shown. The early stages of a romantic relationship spark activity in dopamine-rich brain regions associated with motivation and reward. The more intense the relationship is, the greater the activity. The regions associated with emotion, such as the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship, […] Early on in a relationship, the images showed that the brain seems to be very focused on planning and pursuit of pleasurable reward […] The same regions become active when a person enjoys the pleasure of eating chocolate, […] There are also patterns that resemble aspects of obsessive compulsive disorder.

Dorothy Tennov is probably feeling pretty smug about now.

(Via Boing Boing )