This is your brain.
This is your brain on love.
Yeah, I'm sure there are questions.
Love is a HUGE emotion, it pulls information from our senses of sight and smell, our experiences
throughout our life and hormones are flying through the body affecting our attachments
our feelings and our reactions.
All this is driven by your brain; it controls everything you are.
Scientists know this, so they wanted to scan people experiencing love.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging looks at how blood is flowing through your brain
to determine blood oxygenation, and therefore what parts of the brain are working hardest.
In 2005, the American Physiological Society looked at the brain of 17 men and women who
were "newly and madly in love."
Looking at brain scans, they found activity in their brains' motivation, reward and "drive"
aspects far more than emotions or sex.
They say, "romantic love engages brain systems associated with motivation to acquire a reward,"
which is to say a match for reproduction and genetic compatibility.
That pairing elicits the emotions of euphoria and happiness!
I.E.
Love!
But the question scientists kept asking is, how does LOVE show up in your brain?
When the APS researchers used fMRI's on the participants they found romantic love activated
the right side of the brain, and activates areas related to subcortical reward systems;
while facial attractiveness activated mostly in the left hemisphere.
But a new study in Frontiers of Neuroscience scanned 100 men and women who felt a range
of love-related emotions.
This new research found as love progresses, the activity in the brain changes the structure
of the brain itself.
People who were "in love" reflected earlier studies.
Activity showed up in "reward, motivation, and emotion regulation as well as social cognition."
On the other hand, the longer they were out of love, the lesser activity they had in each
of those areas!
Being in love seems to change how our brain works and organizes itself for everyday behavior,
not just "love" stuff.
This is the first time brain structures have been shown to change for those "in love" and
those who have "ended love."
Of course, this is just a cross-sectional study.
Ideally the researchers would follow the participants and see how their brains changed over the
years they were in and out of love.
Knowing the neurological activity behind love helps us comprehend how love serves to draw
us to ideal mates for genetic and reproductive reasons.
But in the end, we'll need a lot more information to know why such a complex hormonal and neurological
dance is performed.
This new research mirrors the way other animals seem to experience love, which might make
it seem cheaper… but outside of stories, movies and music…
what is love?
We're still figuring that out.