THE SECRET to staying madly in love for life is hidden at the heart of your brain - a finding that may lead to new strategies for keeping alive passionate partnerships, say New York scientists.
Researchers led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine recruited 17 men and women who still love their spouses intensely after two decades of marriage, then scanned their brains as they saw their loved ones' photos. When they compared the results with scans of 17 people who had fallen in love in the previous year, they found that the same area of the brain, the ventral tegmental area, lit up.
One of the authors, Helen Fisher, told the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting this week: “If you ask people around the world whether romantic love can last, they'll roll their eyes and say ‘probably not'. Most textbooks say that too. We are proving them wrong.”
The ventral tegmental area lies at the primitive centre of the brain and monitors how well various fundamental human needs are being satisfied. Addictive drugs such as cocaine target this pleasure area, too.
Marriage as one long affair doesn't have the angst and obsession of new love, says Fisher. It shows calm and attachment; spouses see partners as central to their lives, continue to want engagement and to keep their sex lives lively. Now the team plans to brain-scan new couples over years to see how various life events can switch this brain area on or off - a finding that may help us to see how we might best manipulate these circuits.
Despite our deep need for lifelong love, scientists have done little to study the phenomenon. One survey of 50 couples married for 55 years, in the International Journal of Ageing and Human Development, says that they most value Independence, commitment, companionship and caring. But political skills may play a big role, too. John Gottoman, a Washington University psychologist, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science how his study of 600 couples created a 94 per cent true test of love's longevity: the ratio of positive to negative comments during a row (i.e. “that's a good point, dear”, versus “you idiot”). Positive words must outnumber the negative by five to one. Below this, trouble looms.
Calf life
IF YOUR calves are looking hefty, you may have cause to celebrate - it could indicate that you have a significantly reduced risk of suffering a stroke, say French scientists.
The Stroke journal study of 6,200 people, in the French cities of Dijon, Bordeaux and Montpellier, supports the idea that our body shapes may determine our health fates.
The greater the size of someone's calves, the lower their risk of developing carotid plaques - clots on the wall of neck arteries - concludes a team of doctors at Inserm 700, the French national institute for health research.
Earlier body-shape studies include a Bristol University survey of 3,600 women last year that reported how those with short legs may have a higher risk of liver disease.
Healthy threads
SILK weaves and hiking gear could offer fabric-based cures for broken limbs and heart defects, new studies report.
The Australian Health and Medical Research Congress heard this week how thread from silkworms is being pioneered as a scaffold for new bone to grow in severe fractures. Scientists at Tufts University are using dissolved silk protein to create matrixes over which new bone can grow. When the silk eventually breaks down in the body, it becomes harmless amino acids, the scientists say.
Meanwhile, cardiologists at Rush University, Indiana, are beginning a trial that uses a Gore-Tex-type material to plug holes in human hearts. The flexible Gore-Helex fabric is threaded up to the patient's heart via a leg artery to seal the hole and prevent potentially fatal circulatory failures. The Indiana trial will be one of 50 worldwide.
Breast radar
A RADAR-based breast cancer testing system that uses military technology to make the process quicker and more comfortable than current mamograms has completed trials on its first 60 women.
Bristol University and the United Bristol Hospitals Trust hope to continue testing their new system over the next 12 months. It uses ceramic cups to hold the breasts and to receive radar waves that are pulsed through them. The radar was originally developed to detect landmines.
Roy Johnson, who heads Micrima, the university spin-off company developing the system, says he hopes two more prototype systems will soon begin work in NHS hospitals around the UK.
Life timer
SO, EXACTLY how old is your body? The chronological and physical ages of our bodies are rarely in sync, but so far the only way we can tell if a sprightly 70-year-old has the physiology of a fiftysomething is by educated guesstimate.
Now scientists at the Buck Institute for Age Research say in the journal Aging Cell that they have created a computer system that examines a suite of genes related to physical ageing and estimates how much longer we may live.
So far, though, the system has been pioneered only on nematode worms (below), which scientists like to use because they reportedly have strong physical similarities to the human metabolism. Simon Melov, the lead study author, says that the gene biomarkers may also help us to assess the efficacy (or otherwise) of so-called anti-ageing therapies.
Obese city FC
WHO ate all the pies? It's the football fans themselves, says a survey by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which claims that being a committed sports follower raises your risk of being dangerously obese.
The study found that the more fanatic the supporter, the more likely he is to eat fast-food, consume fewer veg and fail to eat breakfast. Big fans are also far more likely to drink a lot on match days. As the man said in 1966: “They think it's all overweight.”