7 telltale signs you're in love, according to a scientist who's spent decades studying human relationships

• Helen Fisher is a biological anthropologist who studies love and relationships.
• She's found that there are certain universal behaviors that suggest a person is falling in love.
• Those behaviors include not being able to stop thinking about the object of your affection and feeling incredibly energetic.

One of the greatest things about new love is that it really feels new. As in, you're the first person ever to find it difficult to sleep, eat, work, and generally do anything that doesn't involve thinking or talking about the object of your affection.

Tell this to a scientist and they'll laugh. Current evidence suggests that romantic love unfolds in more or less the same way in everyone — both in the way they behave and in the way their brain reacts.

In fact, the Daily Mail recently reported that, by 2028, couples will be able to take a kind of "love test," for which they'll get their brain scanned to see if they're really smitten with their partner.

But when I asked Helen Fisher, who is a biological anthropologist and the chief scientific advisor to dating site Match, whether she believed that such a love test would be available within a decade, she said, "I wouldn't count on it." The brain in love is a combination of multiple systems working together, she added, so it would be hard to isolate just one chemical that indicates a person is in love.

That said, Fisher has studied and written about the universal traits and behaviors associated with romantic love — ones that don't require a brain scan to see. In her book "The Anatomy of Love," which she revised and re-published in 2016, Fisher describes many of those key signs. Some are drawn from research done by Dorothy Tennov, author of the book "Love and Limerence."

Some of those indicators are listed below — and there's a solid chance you've experienced at least one before.

SEE ALSO: 9 hard truths about relationships no one wants to believe

The person is suddenly at the center of your world

Fisher says that the person you're falling for has begun to take on "special meaning." As one participant in Tennov's study said, "My whole world had been transformed. It had a new center and that center was Marilyn."

You can't stop thinking about the person

Fisher calls this "intrusive thinking."

She writes: "Thoughts of the 'love object' begin to invade your mind. ... You wonder what your beloved would think of the book you are reading, the movie you just saw, or the problem you are facing at the office." Similarly, you mentally review all the time you've spent together.

Many people say these thoughts are distracting to the point that they can't focus fully on work or school.

You feel incredibly energetic

"Hypomania" is a term for intense energy, and it's associated with the beginnings of romantic love.

Fisher writes that you might experience "trembling, pallor, flushing, a general weakness, overwhelming sensations of awkwardness and stammering." Or, you might find that you're sweating, that your heart is beating wildly, that you've got butterflies in your stomach, or that you can't eat or sleep.