The WSJ's Sam Schechner reports (in the video below) on a study looking at the brains of people who have just fallen in compared to people who claim to have stayed madly in love for over a decade. The romantic love area of those who have just fallen in love occurs in a very primitive part of the brain - the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The activation levels of people who say they have been in love for ten years or more was the same as people who had only just fallen love so apparently some people do retain that "new love" experience. CNN has an article on love and the brain.
