What is love?
Baby don’t hurt me...don’t hurt me...no more.
No. Sorry, I meant, what is love...from a neuroscience perspective?
Welcome back to Neuro Transmissions! I’m Alie Astrocyte, and this week we’ve got loooove on the brain!
So, what IS love? Well, of course we don’t know everything...if I did, I’d be making
a fortune selling love potions!
But, as we learn more about the human brain, we’re learning more about the neuroscience of love.
Love comes in many forms, but let’s divide it into three categories for our purposes:
Lust, Romantic love, and Attachment.
Lust is that first rush of sexual attraction you feel when you meet someone new.
From an evolutionary perspective, lust is what drives mating and, as a result, babies.
We know that lust is driven at least in part by the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.
Interestingly, testosterone goes down in males, but goes up in females during this
passionate phase.
At the start of a new romantic relationship, levels of cortisol - a stress hormone - quickly
rise, which contributes to the excited, nervous butterflies you might feel in your stomach.
Research has also shown that when someone is infatuated, they have reduced activity
in brain regions like the frontal cortex, which is important for judgment and decision making.
This maaay be why it’s difficult to keep your head straight when you’re falling in love!
They say love is blind, but it seems love is just irrational.
Beyond lust, romantic love drives our attraction to a specific person - it’s what keeps us
in a relationship when that initial lust dials itself back a bit.
Evolutionarily, it can be described as choosing an appropriate mate.
Humans have to invest a lot of time and energy into raising a child, so mate selection is
important - you need to pick someone who’ll be around for at least a few years.
Some click-baity headlines have described falling in love as “just like addiction”.
This is because love causes the release of a number of different neurotransmitters in
the brain, like norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin.
These neurotransmitters have particularly potent effects in the brain’s pleasure centers.
These pleasure centers are spread across the brain, but include structures like the amygdala
- which is linked to emotional responses - and the nucleus accumbens, which is important
for motivation and reward.
Dopamine is an especially potent neurotransmitter - it contributes to the euphoric sensation
of being in love, activating a lot of that reward circuitry in the brain.
Basically, being in love makes you feel good!
So when reporters claim that “love is just like a drug”, what they really mean is that
falling in love activates a lot of the same pathways as using stimulant drugs, such as
amphetamines and cocaine.
But don’t worry, cocaine and love don’t really have much in common otherwise.
Attachment is the love of a parent, a close friend, or a long-term partner.
Attachment is important for maintaining long-term relationships (if that’s your thing), and
for maintaining familial and social connections.
It makes you feel safe and cozy when you’re with a person, but you don’t necessarily
have to “like-like” them to feel this strong attachment.
It helps keep relationships together for years and years.
This type of love seems to be driven by other brain chemicals, like oxytocin and vassopressin.
Oxytocin is sometimes called the “trust” hormone. It’s often released during acts
of touching, such as cuddling, and provides a sense of comfort.
Think about how nice a hug from a good friend feels on a bad day
- you can thank your oxytocin for that!
On a deeper, physical level, oxytocin is the hormone that triggers contractions and lactation
during pregnancy and birth.
The release of this hormone during birth is also associated with mother/child bonding.
Vassopressin, on the other hand, is known primarily in its role in maintaining blood
pressure and cardiovascular function.
It’s also nicknamed the “attachment” hormone, and seems to play a larger role in
attachment bonding in males, since they don’t get some of the benefits of oxytocin.
Both of these hormones together lead us to feel comfortable and relaxed with our close
friends and family - and keep us together even when they’re driving us nuts!
Of course, love is more complex than what I’ve described; there are a lot of social
and philosophical quandaries surrounding the idea of love and passion that we’re not
able to delve into today.
Regardless of your feelings on love and Valentine’s Day, I hope that you’ve learned a little
something new today.
Thanks for watching this special episode of Neuro Transmissions!
If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and make sure to hit the subscribe
button for more videos about the brain!
I’ve loved making these videos and I hope you’ll stick around as we continue to explore.
Until next time, I’m Alie Astrocyte. Over and out!