From what I’ve read, when you start crushing on somebody, your brain is flooded with two primary feel good chemicals: norepinephrine and dopamine.
The simple explanation is that norepinephrine effects how your body feels; the butterflies, heart fluttering.
The dopamine effects your mood.
These chemicals get released each time you interact with this person , be it in person or simply getting a text.
Coincidentally these are the same chemicals involved in drug addiction, except in this case, you’re becoming addicted to a person.
There’s a lot at play really, and we’re still ferreting out most of the neurochemistry.
Essentially what we understand though, is Dopamine (Happy/Reward), Oxytocin(Love), and Serotonin(Happy/Focused).
Serotonin makes you feel good while you’re doing something, being in the zone. It keeps you calm, happy and focused.
Oxytocin is the derpy happy love you feel when you see a cute puppy. It also gets released in a huge quantities when you have sex (or sexy thoughts), which is why before people get older and a bit jaded, sexual attraction = love.
Dopamine is the chemical that you get when you do something and it feels satisfying. It encourages long term objectives and social cohesion. Interestingly, the same system that regulates pleasure regulates pain. It tries to keep a balance, so if you get too much pain, it releases pleasure, and if you get too much pleasure, it releases pain. Rejection triggers this pain system especially hard, which is why emotional pain hurts the way it does. As a super weird side effect to this duality, you can reduce heartbreak with ibuprofen.
When you have a crush (or fall in love, same difference as far as chemicals go), your brain gets flooded with all 3 (with a smattering of other things). This gives you single-minded focus, alternating pain and pleasure, and derpy happy lovey feelings clouding out your normal thinking. Given all that, its pretty understandable why it makes you crazy, and why it’s wonderful and terrible all at once
Edit: Something about norepinephrine which I’ve forgotten completely, which causes fight or flight nerves, and removed the myth about turkey causing drowsiness.
That seems like an oddly specific question, but I’ll give it a go— As compression is applied to the brain, it becomes increasingly difficult for it to perform its normal functions. Meningitis-like symptoms will begin to present, like a strange-feeling headache, stiff neck, nausea, and vomiting. As the brain is crushed even further, seizures and death become likely. This would happen well before total structural failure of the brain, and would likely be due to pinched-off blood vessels, or simple physical damage to critical neuronal circuits.
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