Romantic love involves a series of complex changes in the brain reward machine, making us eager to love.
If you have experienced the evolution from admiration to falling in love, it may seem that this transformation happens naturally. But have you ever wondered how we make this huge emotional leap? In other words, what changes occur in our brains and make us deeply fall in love?
Stephanie Cassiobo, a psychology specialist at the University of Chicago who studied neuroscience about romantic love over the past decade, explains that it involves several complex changes, especially in the brain reward machine. More specifically, in a review of love research published in 2012, Lisa Diamond and Jana Dickinson, a psychologist at the University of Utah, found that romantic love is closely related to the activity of two brain regions, the ventral ventricular region (VTA), the nucleus Sin. " These two regions play a pivotal role in the reward pathway, regulating the levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is responsible for feeling happy. In other words, in the early stages of love, one yearns for one's love because it makes him feel very happy.
These feelings remain over time. Our neurophotographic research, and others' research, suggests that once one falls in love - and as long as the relationship remains satisfactory - just thinking about a partner does not only make him happy, but also relieves pain, stress and other negative emotions.
Although the early stages of early romantic love may be accompanied by a different feeling of love that has been nurtured over the years, our brains may not necessarily recognize this difference. In a study led by Bianca Acevedo, now a researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he found that participants who spent an average of 21.4 years in the married life and who reported that they still felt love for their partners showed their brains in areas rich in dopamine, Ventricular, quite similar to the activity that appeared in the brains of those who lived early love spells.
These patterns of romantic love seem to be general and common in both sexes, in different cultures and sexual orientation. But, according to a review by Diamond and Dickinson, not all kinds of love or desire seem alike. Romantic love and Platonic love, for example, may have their own neurotic character. Studies show that neural processes responsible for attraction and libido can occur in parallel to processes that regulate romantic love, and may intersect with it, but they are very different.
However, no study has so far traced the same person throughout his romantic life to see if neurological changes are going on over time. Experts are now trying to fill these gaps in our understanding of the subject. Future research is likely to target the separation of the brain processes involved, from the first strenuous date until years after the first word of love was uttered. Future research will also examine the core neural processes associated with different types of love, such as family love, friends, places, and things.
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