Where does new love dwell? A scientific map
By Benedict Carey The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 2005
NEW YORK New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend
of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family
and prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades,
yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.
Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images
of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine-and-roses phase of
romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.
In an analysis of the images appearing Tuesday in The Journal of
Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic
love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal. It is closer in its
neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers
assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection.
As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity
associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas
deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.
The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions,
from euphoria to anger, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is
withdrawn.
"When you're in the throes of this romantic love, it's overwhelming -
you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m.
every day - Why? Because she's there," said Helen Fisher, co-author of the
analysis.
"And when rejected, some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide,"
said Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "This drive
for romantic love can be stronger than the will to live."
Brain imaging technology cannot read people's minds, experts caution, and
a phenomenon as many sided and socially influenced as love transcends simple
computer graphics, like those produced by the technique used in the study,
called functional MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging.
Still, said Hans Breiter, director of the Motivation and Emotion
Neuroscience Collaboration at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, "I
would give this study an 'A.' It really moves the ball in terms of
understanding infatuation love."
He added, "The findings fit nicely with a large, growing body of
literature describing a generalized reward and aversion system in the brain,
and put this intellectual construct of love directly onto the same axis as
homeostatic rewards such as food, warmth, craving for drugs."
In the study, Fisher, Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine
in New York City and 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 pictures of their beloveds while an MRI machine scanned
their brains. The researchers then compared the images with others taken while
the students looked at pictures of acquaintances.
Functional MRI 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 when people desire or anticipate a
reward.
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 MRI images, in the caudate
nucleus, was especially active in people who scored high 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," Brown said. The intoxication of new
love mellows with time, of course, and the brain scan findings reflect some
evidence of this change, Fisher said.
In a follow-up experiment, Fisher, Aron and Brown have carried out brain
scans on 17 other young men and women recently dumped by their lovers.
Although they are still sorting through the images, the investigators
have noticed one preliminary finding: increased activation in an area of the
brain related to the region associated with passionate love.
"It seems to suggest what the psychological literature, poetry and people
have long noticed: that being dumped actually does heighten romantic love, a
phenomenon I call frustration-attraction," Fisher said in an e-mail message.
But the heightened activity in these areas inevitably settles down. And
the circuits in the brain related to passion remain intact, the researchers say
- intact and capable in time of flaring to life in the presence of someone new.
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