Science Fell in Love So I Tried to Prove It is a popular rom-com series that's due to return in the upcoming Spring 2022 anime season for another round of experiments in the mysterious realm of love and pair bonds. The gorgeous young scientist Himiro Ayame suspects she has fallen in love with her kuudere classmate Yukimura Shinya, and only the scientific method can prove whether her amorous feelings are genuine.
In Season 1, Shinya and Ayame used every method in the book to reach a conclusion about their possible romantic attraction, and interestingly enough, the science shown in Science Fell in Love is genuine. Love is the subject of countless works of art and is highly subjective, but science can also take an objective approach and prove with chemistry, charts and data exactly how it works.
Chemistry's Role In Romantic Attraction
The human body is one giant chemistry set, with countless hormones and other chemicals running every organ system from head to toe, and that's especially true for the brain and its processes. Hormones are chemicals that serve as a messaging system, affecting everything from mood and appetite to the sleep cycle and certainly emotions and feelings, such as love. In early episodes of Science Fell in Love, Himuro Ayame refers to certain key hormones that affect how a person in love might behave, and those include dopamine, oxytocin and adrenaline.
Dopamine is arguably the "main" hormone of love, and Ayame was eager to explore this hormone and its effects on her mind. This is the reward hormone, and the hypothalamus releases it when a person performs or experiences something rewarding -- anything from eating sugary foods to playing their favorite video game. Most of all, dopamine plays a major role in the attraction phase of pair bonding, after lust and before attachment. If someone like Ayame can hug, kiss or even just look at their love interest, their brain will release a large quantity of dopamine, meaning sharing experiences with their lover is rewarding in every sense.
Norepinephrine is a hormone similar to dopamine that also plays a role in attraction. It can cause feelings of euphoria and giddiness, and it's even known to cause cases of insomnia or loss of appetite, meaning the lover might actually lose sleep over their intense amorous feelings, according to Harvard University. This hormone is also involved with the "fight or flight" response, and similarly, a person in love may get a spike in adrenaline when they view the object of their affection. Adrenaline is also part of "fight or flight," and it causes an increased heart rate, shaky hands, pupil dilation and an increase in blood pressure.
Lastly, the hormone oxytocin plays a major role in romantic attraction, and it serves many functions. Oxytocin is known as the "cuddle hormone," and its presence leads to relaxation, trust and feelings of bonding in a person, or "pro-social" behaviors, as Medical News Today puts it. This hormone plays a major role in the female reproductive system, while it also encourages faithfulness in men when it stimulates the brain's reward center.
The Body Language Of Love
Hormones play a major role in pair bonding, but Ayame and Shinya had even more references to determine if they were truly in love in this anime. They also studied and measured their body language, the physical component of love and attraction, and this can make all the difference. Many widely-known gestures of love have a strong basis in science, from hand-holding and kissing to posture and much more.
Hand-holding is a good start, such as both partners holding hands during a date at the amusement park, since this action can release oxytocin and promote feelings of closeness. Even the method of hand-holding can be informative, from interlaced fingers to a loose grip, with a loose grip suggesting caution or an expression that the hand-holder is claiming the other person as their own. Arm-draping, meanwhile, is a highly intimate move and promotes serious closeness.
Kissing on the mouth can also release a great deal of oxytocin, as Ayame and Shinya proved during the Season 1 finale of Science Fell in Love, and studies suggest that couples who kiss often have a stronger and more satisfying relationship. For women in particular, kissing helps to lead to arousal, and in general, kissing feels good because the lips have so many nerve endings in them. Finally, kissing is a chemical act, and it can release serotonin, which lowers cortisol levels and thus lowers a person's stress levels as well. In other words, kissing can be relaxing as well as intimate, as Science Fell in Love explores.
