Couple Puts Love to the Ultimate Test With Extreme Trip, Brain Scans

Aug. 19, 2010— -- When Mike and Alanna Clear celebrated their blissful romance at their 2008 wedding, neither of them thought proving their love would result in brain scans and an excruciating trip to test their feelings for each other.

Despite being head over heels in love, Mike Clear became nervous after he read a statistic that half of all marriages ended in divorce. He started to wonder if his marriage would also collapse.

"That really kind of struck me. Everyone who goes to the altar to get married is in it for the long run, and yet 50 percent of them fail," he explained. "How do we know which half we're in?"

To find out, he came up with a radical idea: The two would take the road trip of a lifetime and put their young love to an ultimate test. He and his new bride would tackle the world's longest road -- the Pan American Highway, a 29,800-mile trek from Alaska to Argentina -- while riding on a motorcycle with a sidecar.

The London couple quit their advertising jobs and planned for a nine-month journey through 16 countries.

"It was really scary," Alanna Clear admitted.

Before venturing out, they decided to see how deep their love was for each other, and whether their wild adventure would change it over time. The two contacted world-renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher to have their brains scanned.

Mike Clear had read about Fisher in the newspaper, and he got in touch with her on the off chance that she would do her compatibility test on them. But Fisher suggested the two have their brains scanned instead.