LOVE is… a cross between hunger and obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s a bit like eating chocolate, in fact. And beauty isn’t all in the eye of the beholder.
A study of what goes on inside the brains of people who have fallen in love has poured cold water on several of our most cherished romantic notions. Researchers led by anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey asked seven male and 10 female volunteers who claimed to be madly in love to look at pictures of either their loved one or another familiar person while inside a functional MRI scanner. The scans show that early on in a romantic relationship, dopamine-rich brain regions associated with motivation and reward become overactive when people see pictures of their sweetheart. The more intense the relationship, the greater the activity.
Yet although love feels like an intense emotion, the researchers were surprised to see no extra activity in the emotional parts of the brain, such as the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex. These regions are not activated until the later, more mature phases of a relationship, the researchers told the meeting.
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The findings suggest that romantic love is merely a motivation or drive, like hunger or thirst. Early on in a relationship, the brain seems to be very focused on planning and pursuit of pleasurable reward, says Fisher. This drive is mediated by regions called the right caudate nucleus and right ventral tegmentum – the same brain regions that become active when you eat chocolate, she adds.
The work also adds to evidence that love resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder, as the team saw patterns of brain activity that resemble those in people with OCD. “One particular area of the anterior cingulate cortex is [activated] in common,” says team member Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. “The activity is correlated with the length of a relationship, lasting just into the emotional stage.” By this stage we overcome our obsession and form a more lasting bond, or not as the case may be. People who suffer from OCD also have low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and in 1999 an Italian team reported that serotonin levels in the blood plummet in people who fall in love (New Scientist, 31 July 1999, p 42).
Serotonin is also low in people with depression, so antidepressants are geared to raising levels of the chemical. But this could lead to a problem, say the researchers. As the cingulate area is very sensitive to serotonin levels, taking antidepressants could wreck a person’s chances of falling in love.
Not surprisingly, the sexes differ in their responses. Women in love show more emotional activity earlier on in a relationship. They also seem to quiz their memory regions as they look at pictures of their partner, perhaps paying more attention to past experience with them than men do. Few will be surprised that in men love looks more like lust, with extra activity in visual areas that mediate sexual arousal and the “regions associated with penile turgidity”, as Fisher puts it.
Another finding was that although we may desire our partner and find them attractive, at least one part of the brain – the one responsible for making aesthetic judgements – is not blinded by this. It rates attractiveness in a very honest way, agreeing well with the ratings of independent observers. “We say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but part of the brain keeps track of the objective view,” says Fisher.
