Question: Do you love with your heart or brain?

Sam Geen answered on 28 Jun 2013:

I asked my zombie friend and they replied THE BRAAAAAIINNNNN.

But yes! The Ancient Egyptians thought that the heart was responsible for love, as well as thought in general. They believed that a heavy heart meant someone lived a bad life – when people entered the underworld after they died, the god Anubis weighed the heart and if it weighed more than the feather of Maat, it was eaten by a monster! The ancient Chinese also believed that the heart was the seat of the soul. The Roman doctor Galen thought that the heart was the seat of emotions, the brain the seat of reason, and the liver the seat of passions.

In fact, all thoughts come from the brain, including love. However, emotion can be affected by chemicals called hormones made around the body, including the heart (however, the heart’s hormones are only really used to control your heartbeat). Testosterone and oestrogen are what controls whether people look more masculine or feminine, and might make people more likely to want to have sex.

EDIT: Aaaand my amazing sister says –

“BOTH!

Sam is right that it’s mostly brain stuffs, but a lot of Psychologists think that emotions are primarily body states such as increased heart rate, queasiness of stomach, or indeed running screaming, whereas (brain based) feelings are the conscious experiences that, for most people, follow from, or in tandem with) the experience of these bodily states.

Two blokes called Dutton and Aron once got men to walk across one of two bridges. One was a normal bridge, the other one was a very scary one suspended over a tall ravine which caused the heart rate of the men who walked over it to increase. At the end of the bridge was an attractive scientist who got the men to fill out a questionnaire and gave them her number (on a scientific pretense!) They then waited to see which men called up the scientist and asked her on a date! It turned out that the men who had walked across the scary bridge were far more likely to, this was because they had confused their fast heart rate from walking across the bridge with having a crush on the scientist!
So though a lot of love is based in the brain, ask yourself the question, would love still be the same if it didn’t come with that quickened heart beat, the feeling of heat pumping through your face, the sickness caused by blood being diverted?”