While love has inspired playwrights, poets, artists, and composers throughout the ages, many have tried to measure, describe, and understand this enigmatic feeling. One of the most important questions that arose along the way was whether love and affection were just biological things.
Although there is a lot of research that examines the biological basis of maternal and family love, when we look at romantic love, including the definitions, the situation is a bit confusing. Falling in love is often described as a flood of emotions made up of many different emotions. Given the complex nature of love, it’s hardly surprising that poets have done a better (if not perfect) job than scientists at describing exactly what it is.
To begin to examine whether love is a neurochemical construct, we need to understand what goes on in the brain.
Until relatively recently, scientists didn’t even have the tools to investigate this question. Until the early 21st century, most research focused on the psychology of love and attraction. A 2007 review summarized early neurobiological work in this area.
It was already known that the areas of the brain particularly associated with feelings of love contain high concentrations of the neurotransmitter dopamine. As author Semir Zeki explains, “Dopamine release puts a person in a ‘feel-good’ state, and dopamine appears to be closely linked not only to the formation of relationships, but also to sex, which is considered a rewarding and ‘feel-good’ exercise as a result. “
But during this initial burst of emotion, dopamine increases, while another neurotransmitter, serotonin, seems to be depleted. This is similar to an effect seen in the brains of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, Zeki says, and causes thoughts to focus only on the romantic partner, which can be felt in the early stages of a relationship.
Also, some areas of the brain show decreased activation in response to romantic love. As Zeki argues, these involve the amygdala and frontal cortex regions, reducing the judgments that can be felt towards the lover and causing them to be viewed in a more positive way.
One of the first things that come to mind when “chemicals” and “romance” are mentioned are pheromones. According to popular culture, people emit scented signals that are irresistible to potential partners. However, while research in the animal kingdom does indeed show that pheromones are important in the reproductive cycles of some creatures, there is insufficient evidence that they exist in humans.
The most important example of brain chemicals that cannot be ignored may be oxytocin, also called the “love hormone”.
Early descriptions of oxytocin were about its key roles in pregnancy and childbirth. Later research suggested that oxytocin was also linked to sexual function, helping mammals bond with one another, and even helping to repair a broken heart. Much of the work that has helped scientists begin to understand this “hug chemical” has come from studies on an adorable rodent that helped coin the name.
Shrews form monogamous pairs and share burrows with their mates, making them excellent subjects for this type of research. A 2017 study involving these cute little mice claimed to be able to crack the neural code of love and find a neural network that sends a flood of oxytocin (and dopamine) to the brain’s reward centers during romantic bonding.
By hijacking the nervous system they described, the authors of the 2017 shrew study also managed to make voles basically fall in love with each other.
But there’s still much that scientists don’t know about the hormones involved and their full effects in humans. We certainly know that when we fall in love, many different biochemicals start working in the background. As neurologist Parashkev Nachev, writing for The Conversation, puts it, “But to say that love is ‘just’ brain chemistry is like saying that Romeo and Juliet are ‘just’ words – it misses the point. Like art, love is more than the sum of its parts.”
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