This is an incredible picture of two hearts that have been sutured together. When we fall in love, our hearts figuratively become as connected as this image portrays. The minds and bodies of couples in love become synchronized to the point where their breathing patterns and heartrates begin to mirror one another when they sit next to each other. When you watch the one you love go through periods of pain or stress, your own body’s heart-rate shifts and mirrors their agony. This phenomenon is thought to occur due to mirror neurons in your brain, a class of visuomotor neurons that are found in the premotor cortex, which help you feel emotions and observe the mental states that others are feeling, as if they were your own. The more time you spend with someone you love, the stronger the connections your mirror neurons can make. It is believed that the strength of this connection is what gives us the ability to read our loved one’s mind and to know what they are thinking even when they are not speaking.
This research was conducted at the University of California, Davis, and has been published in the American Psychological Association Journal on Emotion and The U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).
Gallese V, Goldman A. Istituto di Fisiologia Umana, Università di Parma, Italy. Trends Cogn Sci. 1998 Dec 1;2(12):493-501.
Written by Student Doctor Navpreet Singh Badesha
