People measure love in many different ways. From the little things like love notes and flowers to bigger gestures like saving one’s life, donating a kidney or basically walking on fire for someone. For some, the best measure of love is finally taking that leap of faith and committing to a life together.

But what about a more physiological way of measuring love?  For the Standford Center of Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, love can be measured in brain activity. Seriously.

They had a competition to see who could love the hardest with a wide range of contestants. A little boy focused on thinking about his newborn cousin, one young woman claimed to never have been in love but daily mediates on the concept of love and the older man focused on his longtime relationship with his wife.

All they had to do was lay in an MRI machine and concentrate on loving someone as much and as hard as they could for five minutes. Who do you think would win? Or better question– do you think you would?

Check out the video here!

Nikki