Understand what new love does to your brain – 02/20/2024 – Balance

A new love can consume our thoughts, overwhelm our emotions and, on some occasions, make us act in unusual ways.

“People sigh for love, live for love, kill for love, and die for love,” says Helen Fisher, senior fellow at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute. “It’s one of the most powerful brain systems that humans have ever evolved.”

Scientists have been studying what’s happening in our brains in the early days of being in love, and whether it can actually change how we think and what we do. Their findings suggest that song lyrics and dramatic plots don’t go overboard: new love can mess with our heads.

Experts define “romantic love” as a connection deeper than lust but distinct from the attachment associated with a long-term relationship. In some of the small studies that have examined this passionate state, researchers put people in the early stages of a romantic relationship (typically less than a year) into MRI scanners to see what was happening in their brains as they looked at photos of their loves.

They found that participants showed increased activity in areas of the brain rich in dopamine, a neurochemical that controls feelings of desire and desire. These regions are also activated by drugs like cocaine, leading some experts to compare love to a kind of “natural addiction.”

Studies on prairie voles (yes, you read that right) corroborate these findings. Rodents are one of the few mammal species that mate for life, so researchers sometimes use them as a scientific model for human partnerships. Studies show that when these animals bond, the brain’s reward system is similarly activated, triggering the release of dopamine.

“Romantic love doesn’t emanate from your cerebral cortex, where you think; it doesn’t emanate from the brain regions in the middle of your head, linked to the limbic areas, linked to emotions,” says Fisher, who led one of the first human studies on the topic and , in addition to her role at the Kinsey Institute, is Match.com’s chief scientific advisor. “It’s based on brain regions linked to drive, focus, motivation.”

This kind of dopamine activity may explain why, in the early stages of love, you have the overwhelming desire to constantly be with your loved one — what addiction literature calls “craving.” In fact, preliminary research conducted by Sandra Langeslag, associate professor in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, suggests that some people desire their lover like they desire a drug.

In one of the few studies that directly compared love and addiction, which is still ongoing and has not yet been published, Langeslag showed ten people who vaped nicotine pictures of their loved one or pictures of other people vaping (a classic experiment used to evoke desire ). Participants rated their desire to be with their partner higher than their desire to smoke.

Other research from Langeslag’s lab examined the obsession of love — of being unable to think about anything other than your beloved. In a series of small studies of people in love, Langeslag found that participants reported thinking about the object of their desire approximately 65% ​​of their waking hours and said they had difficulty focusing on unrelated topics. However, when people were reminded of information related to their loved one, they showed increased attention and had improved memory.

There is also evidence that love can make people blind to a new partner’s flaws — the “love is blind” phenomenon. Lucy Brown, a professor of neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found that when some study participants viewed photos of their loved one at the beginning of a relationship, they had less activity in a part of the prefrontal cortex that is important for decision-making. and evaluation of others. The findings suggest that we can “suspend negative judgments of the person we are in love with,” she said.

If love can alter our motivation and attention, perhaps it’s no surprise that people sometimes go to extremes when under its thumb. But giving in to obsession with your lover isn’t necessarily “irrational” behavior, at least from an evolutionary perspective, says Langeslag.

Scientists believe that humans evolved to have these types of responses — which appear to be consistent across ages, genders and cultures — because bonding and mating are essential for the survival of the species.

“Romantic love is an impulse,” says Fisher. “It’s a basic mating drive that evolved millions of years ago to send your DNA into tomorrow. And it can ignore just about anything.”