Dr. Zina Besirevic
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
(William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 1, scene 1)
For centuries, poets, writers and philosophers have told us that love comes from the heart. This notion has found its unwavering grounding in most languages, for, when we say we are doing something from the heart, we mean that we are doing it with love. Indeed, to uncouple love from the heart seems an unspeakable violation of not only poetry, but folk wisdom too. While artists have written of love, more copiously and for longer than of anything else, neuroscientists have only recently began to weigh in on the subject matter. At the risk of ruining the romantic aspect of the project, they started with an assumption – a correct one, that it is in the brain, not the heart, that love resides. As the conductor of the entire symphony of our human experience, the brain writes out the love song. How – with clarity and precision. Why – to do its job of driving our metabolic functions towards survival. So, would we die without love? Many of us have, at certain points in life, felt right at the precipice of that possibility. Neuroscientifically speaking though, there really is an argument to be made here.
Being in love feels like walking without our feet touching the ground, like flying high, and this is no illusion; we feel high because we are. Love is chemical. In the past few decades, research in neuroscience – a field of science that integrates medicine, biology, chemistry and psychology, has shown that in early-stage, intense romantic love, a primitive part of the brain’s reward system is activated first. Located in the midbrain’s ventral tegmental area (VTA), this part of the brain is associated with meeting our basic needs, such as drinking when thirsty and eating when hungry, indicating that romantic love is really a drive to fulfill a basic need. Further and deeper research, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), found that 12 areas of the brain work together to release the main chemicals implicated in feelings of being in love (Cacioppo, 2012). Specific parts of the brain’s reward circuit light up due to a rush of blood flow into those areas – VTA, striatum, nucleus accumbens, hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. Respectively, these areas are implicated in basic drives, social praise, increased heart rate, emotion and memory formation, and creative imagination, functions that become heightened when we are in love. Conversely, the amygdala, and the frontal and parietal cortices, areas that regulate fear, judgment, logic, and our capacity for divided attention, are deactivated (Zeki, 2007). No wonder then, that when in love, we feel safe, all our logic goes out of the window, and our attention is directed towards that one person only.
However, the synaptic firing in different parts of the brain is just one part of the story. In addition, when we are in love, a few specific chemicals are released abundantly, while specific others are suppressed. We become flooded with the “feel-good” hormone dopamine, the “hug” hormone oxytocin, the “monogamy” hormone vasopressin, as well as the “excitement” neurotransmitter adrenaline. Oxytocin and vasopressin in particular, as key hormones for both romantic and maternal attachment, are released during orgasm, childbirth, and pair bonding. Interesting research has found that in prairie voles, which bond for life, vasopressin levels in the brain are high but if the hormone is blocked, the male will abandon his partner. While all these hormones converge in increased levels, serotonin, the hormone that regulates appetite and mood is suppressed. Broader research has shown that low levels of serotonin are crucial in anxieties and obsessive-compulsive disorders. This then, can give us some “chemical idea” as to why, when in love, we can become obsessed with details of a text message, and anxious over minutes of waiting for a phone-call, while also being in an elated mood and not so hungry. Yet, as anyone who has been in love knows, this euphoria does not last. So what causes the change? Once we become one half of a committed couple, what is activated – or rather what the thought of the beloved activates in the brain, spans more brain areas. One of those areas is the basal ganglia, responsible for motor control but also for promoting attachment in mammals – and in this case, for helping us stay in relationships even when we are no longer “walking on air”.
Outwardly, there are many changes in how longer-term love looks like. There is a certain synergy in how lovers move, talk, and even finish each other’s sentences. Inwardly, on a neural level, this is due to a greater activation of cognitive brain areas, especially those implicated in language use. The longer we are together with someone the more we also shift into activation of the mirror neuron system. Mirror neurons help us both anticipate, and align with the actions of loved one. It is fair to say, that long term love makes us sharper. Leaving romance intact, what can we take away from neuroscience here? Perhaps the knowledge that being crazy in love, is not crazy at all. Quite the contrary, to produce a feeling of in-loveness the brain mounts a sophisticated and classy neurochemical production, geared towards maximizing our chances to project ourselves into the future, through our offspring. On the other hand, returning to poetry and prose we can also concede that, “Love is perhaps the only thing in this world, which should not be explained nor traced in reasoning” (Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish).
Citations
Aron, A. et all. (2005). Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of neurophysiology, 94(1), 327-337.
Cacioppo, S., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2012). Decoding the invisible forces of social connections. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 6, Article 51. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2012.00051
de Boer, A., Van Buel, E. M., & Ter Horst, G. J. (2012). Love is more than just a kiss: a neurobiological perspective on love and affection. Neuroscience, 201, 114-124.
Dębiec, J. (2007). From affiliative behaviors to romantic feelings: a role of nanopeptides. FEBS letters, 581(14), 2580-2586.
Zeki, S. (2007). The neurobiology of love. FEBS letters, 581(14), 2575-2579.
