This article is one of a four part series on love designed to augment the holiday spirit with a camera overlay of technological insight into the mystery of "us".

Part 1. The Physiology of Love

The ongoing study of the physiology of love came to an interesting place 5 years ago. Doctors Arthur Aaron, Lucy Brown and Helen Fisher published a paper titled "Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love" research which plainly reads: we are not in the driver's seat of love.

This is old research but still not in the mainstream. Helen Fisher spoke at TED in 2008 describing the furtherance of that research. If you haven't seen it, it's illuminating. Afterward, examine the masthead videos there's hours of videos relating to this research. You can read their paper here: http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/reprint/94/1/327.pdf

The data shows, among other things, that the parts of the human brain that are active in romantic love are the same parts associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and cocaine addiction. According to the study, when we begin "pair bonding" or the "honeymoon phase", we bond more than we think.

The Chemistry Between Us by The London Suede, has magical relevance to the study. Celebrating the nature of pair-bonding and identity extraction with lyrics:

"oh, class A, class B. Is that the only chemistry- between us? oh we are young and not tired of it, oh we are young and easily lead- by all the kids getting out of their heads."

One takeaway I get from this is the validation of an ancient piece of relationship wisdom: Don't break up over the holidays, it's never worth it. Just wait a month.

In the next segment "Realtime Love and Obsession" we'll examine this research in light of the realtime phenomenon. Follow @tttv for the alert.