Event overview:

Why do we fall in love? Can humans really experience love at first sight? Why do we prefer one person over another? Anthropologist and author Helen Fisher will address these age-old questions and more as she shares her insight into how the brain shapes how we love. 

In her work, Dr. Fisher distinguishes three primary drives that evolved for reproduction: the sex drive, romantic love, and long-term attachment. She will discuss how these three brain networks interact to shape our mating and reproductive strategies. Then using anthropological data and the results of brain scanning studies of men and women who are happily in love and rejected in love, she will reveal the basic traits of romantic love, frustration attraction, abandonment rage, the despair response, addiction to love, and other phenomena associated with romantic passion. Her talk will conclude with global trends that are shaping patterns of sexual behavior, romance, and marriage.

Helen Fisher earned her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado. She has conducted extensive research on the evolution of human sex, love, and marriage and gender differences in the brain. She is the author of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love and Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. Her work has been featured in Time and The New York Times.    

Additional Information

The Swartz Foundation – Mind/Brain Lecture Series Home Page

http://www.theswartzfoundation.org/research_c.asp

Stony Brook University Mind/Brain Lecture Series Home Page

http://ws.cc.stonybrook.edu/sb/mind/index.shtml

Directions to Stony Brook University

http://ws.cc.stonybrook.edu/sb/directions.shtml

Related resources on the Internet:

Helen Fisher’s Home Page

http://helenfisher.com/

Dr. Helen E. Fisher, Visiting Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University

http://anthro.rutgers.edu/faculty/fisher.shtml

• American Council on Education, Office of Women in Higher Education, Rutgers University Chapter -- Helen Fisher: brief biography: http://acenet.rutgers.edu/fisher.html

Books and Reviews

Amazon.com: Books by Helen Fisher

NY Times Book Review: The First Sex; The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/f/fisher-first.html

New York Times Book Review: Love Potion No. 9 (by Liesl Schillinger, March 7, 2004)

Why We Love; The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904EFD9133CF934A35750C0A9629C8B63

Book review: Why We Love

The Wall Street Journal, 13 February 2004

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2004.html

Salon.com Why We Love book review: “This is your brain in love”

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/01/27/fisher/index_np.html

Random House Author Spotlight: Helen Fisher

http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/authors/results.pperl?authorid=8750

Articles and Events

Does love endure?

Newsday
March 28, 2006

http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-hslove0328,0,777114.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

Love; The Chemical Reaction

Cover Story, National Geographic Magazine, February 2006

http://ngm.com/0602

Watching New Love As It Sears the Brain

May 31, 2005 - by Benedict Carey (NY Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/health/psychology/31love.html

Book review by Helen Fisher: The Naked Woman; A Study of the Female Body, by Desmond Morris.

August 28, 2005 – New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28FISHERL.html

What's a Modern Girl to Do?

October 30, 2005 - by Maureen Dowd (NY Times Magazine)

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB061EFA3B5B0C738FDDA90994DD404482

David Gergen, editor-at-large of U.S. News and World Report, interviews Helen Fisher on the PBS program NewsHour. Transcript from August 16, 1999

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/july-dec99/fisher_8-16.html

She's So Cool, So Smart, So Beautiful: Must Be A Girl Crush

August 11, 2005 - by Stephanie Rosenbloom (NY Times – Science Section)

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60B13FC3F5A0C728DDDA10894DD404482

In Sex, Brain Studies Show, 'la Différence' Still Holds

March 16, 2004 - by Anahad O'Connor

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9504EFDB1631F935A25750C0A9629C8B63

Drury University – Speaker’s Corner: Gender

http://www.drury.edu/multinl/story.cfm?ID=5406&NLID=224

The science of love; I get a kick out of you

February 12, 2004 - The Economist

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/econ669/love.html

Love Is the Drug...Passion is born in the brain's addiction center, study finds 

HealthDay - by E.J. Mundell

http://myhealth.ucsd.edu/healthnews/healthday/050610HD526178.htm

Dr. Helen Fisher, speaker at the Third Annual Women’s Partnership for Science Lunch and Lecture to benefit women scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

http://www.cshl.edu/public/releases/charm.html

Miami University of Ohio – Lecture Series

Helen Fisher, guest speaker, March 6, 2006

http://www.units.muohio.edu/lecture/lectures/fisher.php