If you got dumped, would you take an anti-love drug designed to mend your broken heart? Or suppose your relationship counsellor offered you and your partner meds that would help re-kindle your failing relationship? Would you take them?

On the flip side, if your ex was on a week-long course of pills to help them get over you, like one gets over the flu, would that be ok? What if your recent one night stand popped a tablet before the union to block out emotional attachment?

While passion pills are yet to hit the pharmacy shelves, the chemistry that binds people together is ultimately just that – brain chemistry – and scientists are increasingly investigating what hormones and neuro-chemicals are involved in falling in and out of love. But is it ok if we start playing with love and lust? Is it rational to modulate our most fundamental emotions?

Join neuroethicist and Ethics Centre philosopher-in-residence Nicole Vincent for a thought-provoking group conversation about love, and how advances in the mind sciences affect our understanding and experience of this basic human emotion.

Love & the Brain is the first talk in a weekly four-part series in which Dr Vincent will explore how breakthroughs in psychology, science and genetics are shifting our understanding of the human condition.

Nicole Vincent is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Neuroscience at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She was previously a research fellow at Macquarie University and is affiliated with Technische Universiteit Delft in The Netherlands.

Coming up on June 4 - Happiness & the Brain.

Doors open at 6pm for a 6:15pm start. Drinks and nibbles included in the ticket price.

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