Study: Five minutes spent loving someone can be transformative
Feb 21, 2012, 11:52 AM | Updated: 2:01 pm
A study dubbed “The Love Competition” conducted at Stanford measured brain activity in attempts to determine if one person can love more than another, but what seemed really apparent from the study is people really like spending five minutes thinking about someone they love.
“I just felt like this surge of warmth and happiness and excitement,” said one person that participated in the study.
“I loved that experience,” said another test subject. “I felt like I was in outer space in a really trippy wonderful way.”
People that participated in the study were asked to sit in an MRI machine for 5 minutes and “love someone as hard as they can.”
The scientists conducting the study then measured the “brain regions involved in producing the neurochemical experience of love.”
97.3 KIRO FM host John Curley said he was moved seeing people’s reactions after they spent five minutes loving someone.
“That five minutes spent thinking just about that one person, it was transformative for many of them,” said Curley. “After each person came out, they videotaped them and they really looked like they had been somewhere else, like they had been on vacation. Their face had completely changed. They seemed to have this sort of glow and energy about them.”
Listen to MRI love contest discussion on John Curley Show
Watch short film about the study:
By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
