brain on love

there are a few scientific studies that have linked the brain with love and attachment & so it seems that the heart is not the only organ involved in your relationships.  I’ve been helping a friend Giorgio Ungani to organize TEDx Dubai and have now developed an overactive interest in the mind & brain as a side effect.  So I thought I’d list some of the studies results in this post.  If you are interested in helping out please follow on Twitter @tedxdubai or post a short video on 12secondstv or else contact Giorgio with your ideas.

“The brain is the only part of the human machine that doesn’t wear out. Probably it’s because the brain is the only part that is not overworked.” Unknown

In a BBC News article How the brain registers love

The researchers at University College London took two brain scans of 17 male and female volunteers. The first was taken while the subject was looking at a picture of their partner with whom they claimed to be “head over heels in love”.  The second scan was taken as the volunteer looked at a picture of a friend who was the same sex as their loved one. Dr Andreas Bartels said that looking at pictures of the partner produced activity in two distinct areas of the brain that looking at the friend did not.  These were in the medial insula, a part of the brain associated with “gut feelings”, and part of the anterior cingulate, associated with feelings of euphoria. Dr Bartels said: “It’s not surprising that we got a response in this particular part of the brain.”   The team used a lie detector test as a way of checking the emotions of the participants – lie detectors are triggered by skin changes caused by strong emotions.

“Your Design mind (right brain) attends to the melody of life, whereas your Sign mind (left brain) attends to the notes that compose the melodies. And here is the key to natural writing: the melodies must come first.” Gabriele Lusser Rico

“The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of. “Charles H. Perkhurst

In the New York Times I found an older article called Watching New Love as It Sears the Brain By Benedict Carey:

In the study, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led a team that analyzed about 2,500 brain images from 17 college students who were in the first weeks or months of new love. The students looked at a picture of their beloved while an M.R.I. machine scanned their brains. The researchers then compared the images with others taken while the students looked at picture of an acquaintance.

Functional M.R.I. technology detects increases or decreases of blood flow in the brain, which reflect changes in neural activity.  In the study, a computer-generated map of particularly active areas showed hot spots deep in the brain, below conscious awareness, in areas called the caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area, which communicate with each other as part of a circuit.  These areas are dense with cells that produce or receive a brain chemical called dopamine, which circulates actively when people desire or anticipate a reward. In studies of gamblers, cocaine users and even people playing computer games for small amounts of money, these dopamine sites become extremely active as people score or win, neuroscientists say.

Yet falling in love is among the most irrational of human behaviors, not merely a matter of satisfying a simple pleasure, or winning a reward. And the researchers found that one particular spot in the M.R.I. images, in the caudate nucleus, was especially active in people who scored highly on a questionnaire measuring passionate love.  This passion-related region was on the opposite side of the brain from another area that registers physical attractiveness, the researchers found, and appeared to be involved in longing, desire and the unexplainable tug that people feel toward one person, among many attractive alternative partners.

This distinction, between finding someone attractive and desiring him or her, between liking and wanting, “is all happening in an area of the mammalian brain that takes care of most basic functions, like eating, drinking, eye movements, all at an unconscious level, and I don’t think anyone expected this part of the brain to be so specialized,” Dr. Brown said.

“Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.” Edward De Bono

More recently in the LA Times Dear, I love you with all my brain: Dopamine brings people together and oxytocin keeps them attached, studies show. Is love just chemistry? by Judy Foreman:

In the initial love study at Stony Brook, 10 women and seven men in intense, “early-stage” love were put into a functional MRI brain scanner, which can detect activity in specific parts of the brain. They were then shown pictures of their loved one or a neutral person.  In these lovebirds, one dopamine-rich region in particular — the ventral tegmental area — consistently lighted up upon viewing the loved one, but not the neutral person, according to the research, published in 2005. The intensity of the brain’s response to falling in love, says co-author Lucy L. Brown, a neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, suggests that it “is not just an emotion but a drive, a real goal like food or water.”

In new data presented at scientific meetings in 2008 and 2009, Bianca Acevedo, now a post-doctoral fellow in social neuroscience at UC Santa Barbara but formerly at Stony Brook, focused on 10 women and seven men still in love after 21 years of marriage. Like the young lovers, when these volunteers were put in scanners and shown pictures of their partners, their dopamine-rich areas lighted up.  “But in contrast to those newly in love,” Acevedo says, other brain regions did too, including areas rich in oxytocin, vasopressin (a similar chemical) and serotonin, a brain chemical associated with well-being and calmness.

The link between long-term attachment and oxytocin has long fascinated researchers, among them, Sue Carter, a neuroendocrinologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Carter’s work has centered on prairie voles, known for their enduring bonds. Compared with other rodents, prairie voles — part of the only 3% of mammals that form monogamous bonds — have more active oxytocin. Moreover, brain cells with receptors that specifically latch onto oxytocin lie in the very brain regions believed to be important in forming attachments, Carter says.

Other researchers have shown that when mice (not known for their monogamous ways), are injected with a gene containing instructions for making the receptor of oxytocin, the mice cozy up to their mates like voles.  Lack of oxytocin is important too. For instance, if female animals are stressed by being isolated, their oxytocin drops. In humans, Emory University research shows that women who were seriously abused as children have low oxytocin levels as adults.

“A girl with brains ought to do something with them besides think.” Anita Loos

From MSNBC in an article titled How your brain handles love and pain: Scanners reveal mechanisms behind empathy and placebo effect by Daniel Kane some fotos of the brain areas:

I would like to leave you with a very funny video Tale of Two Brains by Mark Gungor.  Enjoy…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Scientists identify brain region that helps us make choices (telegraph.co.uk)
• Brain scans used to read memories (guardian.co.uk)
• Brain-behavior disconnect in cocaine addiction (scienceblog.com)
• Scientists read minds with brain scanner (cbc.ca)
• Sweet science! Love lasts longer than thought (msnbc.msn.com)
• Episode 98: Evolutionary Psychology – An Interview with Dr. David Buss (thepsychfiles.com)
• Love Comes From Head, Not Heart (cbsnews.com)
• Searching for ways to make love last (nationalpost.com)
• Brain Scanners Know Where You’ve Been (wired.com)
• Why True Love is So Rare (shoppingblog.com)

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Related Posts

• review of be2 relationship assessment Today I'm going to review be2.com relationship assessment The questionnaire is short, easy to complete & not too taxing to the gray matter! The only information that I could find on their website regarding their profiling tool is as per below: In order to find out who is compatible with......
• Review of Perfectmatch.com's Relationship Assessment Today I am back to reviewing the online dating sites with the focus on Perfectmatch.com's Duet.  Their claims on the website are as per below: "Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher." James Stephens The Duet® Total Compatibility System identifies......
• love is an adventure Love and relationships = risk. This is enough to turn some people off even setting out on this adventure. Some after experiencing the losses & costs may alter their behavior so as to minimize the loss & the transformation that calls itself Love....
• like attracts like? I have been reading an article from the Pasadena Weekly titled 'The Love Lab: Our intrepid reporter goes behind the doors of eHarmony Labs to find out whether research can illuminate the mysteries of the human heart.'  by Ilsa Setziol I have quoted some parts of the article below as......
• Review of GenePartner compatibility test And now for something completely different, I want to review GenePartner compatibility test.  They match people by analyzing their DNA.  The test is based on a sample of dna from within the mouth & costs $USD99. "We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I......

Related Websites

• AUSTRALIA - breakthrough in stem cell research Image via Wikipedia Scientists have made a breakthrough in stem cell research which raises the prospect of regrowing damaged sections of a person's liver, pancreas or even their brain. Researchers at the University of NSW have found a way to improve the lifespan and competitiveness of stem cells, overcoming......
• Do you pick up loose change? I do. I keep an eye out for it. I might start posting a running total of what I find. Now, if I see the money being dropped, I tell the person. If it's a substantial amount of money ($1.00 or more) I look around or leave my name, address,......
• Reviewing Five Email Directories to Find An Email Address Check Out Our Reviews Of The Top Email Finders Today! If you find yourself desperately trying to find and email address with no luck whatsoever, you are definitely not looking in the right place. With so many millions of email addresses out there, looking for the one you re looking......
• Technology and Community Development TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT KUMAH ERIC JUNIOR MARCH 2009 ABSTRACT: In today's world, technology has invaded many aspects of human life. From its gigantic influence on our education and professional development, to the more subtle presence of little gadgets littering our homes, technology is almost everywhere. The reasons for such......
• Hairs grown from stem cells could restore hearing to the deaf Image by /*dave*/ via Flickr Researchers at the University of Sheffield have created the complex hair cells and the neurons needed for hearing from human stem cells. They found they could encourage stem cells from the inner ears of human foetuses to grow into these highly specialised hearing cells.......