I finished my senior year several months earlier than projected, but a technicality required me to continue to go to school everyday. In order to keep me occupied, my teachers would occasionally give me a writing topic or just let me come up with one. The following essay is one example of the latter, and its one I've looked into rather often over the years since I first ran across the idea in the short book Scientific Facts In The Bible: 100 Reasons To Believe The Bible Is Supernatural In Origin. I've rewritten it quite a few times, and this latest version was used in my college English course.

Miller & Levine Biology textbook. 1.1 The Neuron 1.2 The Central Nervous System 1.3 The Peripheral Nervous System 1.4 The Senses 2.0 The Endocrine System

Love is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on trust, belief, pleasure and reward activities within the brain, limbic processes. These processes critically involve oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and serotonergic signaling. Moreover, endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms, coupled to nitric oxide autoregulatory pathways, play a role. Naturally rewarding or pleasurable activities are necessary for survival and appetitive motivation, usually governing beneficial biological behaviors like eating, sex, and reproduction. Yet, a broad basis of common signaling and beneficial neurobiological features exists with connection to the love concept, thereby combining physiological aspects related to maternal, romantic or sexual love and attachment with other healthy activities or neurobiological states. Medical practice can make use of this concept, i.e., mind/ body or integrative medicine. Thus, love, pleasure, and lust have a stress-reducing and health-promoting potential, since they carry the ability to heal or facilitate beneficial motivation and behavior. In addition, love and pleasure ensure the survival of individuals and their species. After all, love is a joyful and useful activity that encompasses wellness and feelings of well-being. © Pepe Peperino