Love and the Brain: experiment in neuroaesthetics at UCL

About a month ago, my friend Edoardo Zamuner, a Reserch Fellow at the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Professor Semir Zeki (UCL), invited me to participate to an experiment in Neuroaesthetics.  As described in Wikipedia: Neuroesthetics investigates the structure and activity of the brain in response to experiences of esthetic phenomena. This relatively young discipline take advantage of neuroimaging tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and in genetic analysis which makes everything more interesting from a visual and semiotic perspective.

The particular project that the lab of Prof. Zeki is working on at the moment is about romantic love and obviously has something to do with face recognition of the loved one. The group is interested in scanning the brain of eterosexual and homosexual subjects in a love relationship from 1 month to 5 years.
This is how the experiment was intorduced to me:

"Love is one of the most overwhelming sentiments in human experience. Understanding what happens in our brain when we see our lover is of great benefits to society. If you agree to take part in this study you will be invited to a laboratory visit. You will be asked to provide photographs of your lover and also other people of the same sex for whom you have natural feelings. We will scan these images and return the photographs to you directly. You will also fill out a questionnaire about your feelings toward your lover. 
The scanning of your brain will last about one hour. During the scan you will see the faces of your lover ad the neutral people repeatedly. You are asked to press a button when you see a particular visual prompt. We will monitor your heart rate, breathing and skin conductance by instruments attached to your body. Directly after the scan you will fill out the questionnaire about your feelings a second time."

I did the lab visit last week and yesterday I did the brain scanning. It was a tremendously interesting experience. Not only because I think this project is amazing and because all the people involved are highly qualified and inspiring individuals but also because of my interest in data visualisation in the art-formerly-known-as-new-media-art.

At the end of the experiment John Romaya, the computer programmer who coordinated the scanning of my brain gave me a software application to explore the regions of my brain. The images I am posting here are from a structural scanning, from a side, back and zenithal point of view.

Oh and the reason why they are not looking into individuals in a relationship longer then 5 years is because it seems that after only 1 year..the brain does not react to the sight of the loved one in the same way anymore..This is a sad and not very surprising fact.

I am looking forward to the paper that will examinate the results of the empirical data, which is supposed to come out sometime in 2009. If you live in London and you would like to volunteer for this amazing research project please contact Doctor Edoardo Zamuner at e.zamuner@ucl.ac.uk. At the particular stage of the project they are particularly interested in scanning the brains of homosexuals subjects and of people from ethnic minorities.