Miguel Pita, geneticist: When you fall in love, mechanisms are activated that cause you to suffer when you fall out of love'

"Love is a very sophisticated derivative of sex, says Miguel Pita. This doctor of genetics and cell biology has rolled up his sleeves to try to explain in a book one of the greatest and most beautiful mysteries of the human mind: how and why we fall in and out of love, and why we focus, in particular, on that one person who becomes the object of our obsessive thoughts throughout the process."

"El cerebro enamorado (In English, The Enamored Brain) is not a self-help book, nor does it pretend to be. It reads like a novel that tells the story of Raquel and Inigo, the fictional couple Pita uses to illustrate the brain and hormonal changes they experience and the joys and pains they endure from their instant attraction to their eventual separation."

"I wanted to make it clear that this is a book based on scientific knowledge, very different from those written based on opinions or feelings, and from self-help or personal growth books. I'm not aiming to offer self-help; I don't include tricks for getting over a breakup, but you can understand what happened to you after yours, and you'll also realize that you're not alone in the world."

Love functions as a sophisticated derivative of sex driven by neural and hormonal mechanisms. Brain and endocrine changes underlie instant attraction, obsessive focus on a single person, attachment, and the emotional pain of separation. A narrative centered on fictional characters Raquel and Inigo exemplifies the neural dynamics and emotional arcs from initial attraction through eventual breakup. The approach avoids offering self-help tricks or manipulative tactics for winning or recovering partners. Scientific framing helps individuals understand and normalize their experiences, noting similar patterns in other species such as voles, while acknowledging that many mechanisms behind love remain complex and partly unknown.

Read at english.elpais.com