Love and Neurobiology: Not So Strange Bedfellows

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Love and Neurobiology: Not So Strange Bedfellows

"The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed." -J. Krishnamurti

Love is one of life's great mysteries. People live and build their lives around love. For many people, love, or the quest to find love, is a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Love is arguably the most overwhelming of all emotions. Many ideals and religions consider the bond of love sacred. But, why do people fall in love? Is romantic love an enigma, or can it be reduced to the presence of certain chemicals and neurotransmitters within the brain at a given time?

In the hit movie Roxanne, Steve Martin plays an articulate, put-together fire chief. However, when he falls in love with Roxanne, he acts crazy and performs dangerous acrobatics on her balcony in an attempt to earn her love. In Titanic, the two lovebirds risk it all in a vein attempt to pursue their love. And, in Shakespeare's classic, Romeo and Juliet, the love struck Venetians deny their families and take their own lives in the name of love. What causes this temporary insanity that most everyone encounters at some point in his or her life? Many believe that love is spontaneous and inexplicable, however many neurobiologists disagree. They stand by the idea that the brain causes all behavior, even love.

The scientific definition of love is "having stimulation that one desires" (5). Recent research by two British neurologists concludes that love is linked to certain brain activities. By conducting tests using a magnetic resonance imager, the scientists measured brain activity in 17 people while they were viewing a picture of their loved one, and while they were viewing a photo of a friend of the same sex as their lover. When the individuals see the picture of the person they love, clear activity occurs in four regions of the brain that were not active when the image of the friend was present. The media insula, which is responsible for instinctual feelings, and the anterior cingulate, which acts in response to euphoria-inducing drugs, such as cocaine, are the two areas of the cortex stimulated by pictures of a lover. The striatum, that is activated when we are rewarded and the prefrontal cortex also increase their activity when shown the same picture.

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