There is no neuron with our lover’s face on it. There are instead a vast number of neurons that, as a stable set of connections, represent our lover. When they are important to us, we concentrate on them, and as we do, the brain increases the neurochemical strengths of their neural connections.
Many things are unimportant to us, or become so. For these things the neurochemical linkages become weaker, and finally the thought dissipates like an abandoned spiderweb. Neurons cut unused and unimportant thoughts by weakening the neurochemical strengths of their connections. Often a vestigial connection is retained, capable of being triggered by a concentrated retracing of its path of creation, starting with the sensory neurons that anchor it.
On the “hard” problem of love – Virtually Human by Martine Rothblatt
SEAREIGNS 