Love Is Dope: The Art of Love and Neurobiology
The study of romantic love crosses the fields of art, psychology, and neurobiology. Picasso rendered the aesthetics and emotions of his lovers in abstract paintings. Contrarily, scientists analyze brain imaging and behavior to decode the neuronal aspects of the feelings of love and romantic relationships. Unveiling primordial areas of the brain that are engaged in love and romance have exposed core regions of the reward system that are stimulated in response to romantic feelings (1, 4). This zone and areas that connect to the core are those that are implicated in controlling reward, euphoria, desire, and addiction. Feelings, chemicals, and the brain infuse romance.
You Feel Me?
Feelings, including pleasure, joy, and compassion, are mentally established, but coordinate viscerally to a body part or organ (1). Our lives are regulated by feelings using the nervous system due to the need of our physiology to remain within homeostasis. So what generates feelings? Chemical interactions between the brain and anatomical zones upon sensations underpin the phenomenon of feelings. The vagus nerve extends from the brainstem where body states are mapped to anatomical regions like the heart and gastrointestinal tract. This allows the translation of innate senses into physiological conditions.
Translation: When your heart races, palms sweat, and you feel butterflies in your tummy upon connecting with that special someone, your vagus nerve is telling you that you hold feelings of love.
The brainstem, a primitive and evolutionarily retained structure, luminesces in neuroimages during episodes of feeling. This is conducive to sparking and encouraging feelings and emotion. The brainstem eventually traces internal senses to the insula, the prime cortical area implicated in emotion. How remarkably romantic is it that the insula may promote cognitive functions of feelings and emotion? (Insert sarcasm) Interestingly, during this passage of info, the brainstem transmits data it retrieves to the cerebral component partially responsible for linguistics.
Translation: If you or your romantic interest or partner is unable to articulate emotions, then blame it on the cortical telencephalon. Partially, anyway.
The Kiss by Picasso (1969) represents a shared kiss by two lovers joined by a single line.
The external sensory systems purportedly send signals to the brainstem and spinal cord for further processing as feelings. On a neuronal level, the progression from perception to feeling is explained as: the greater the stimuli, the larger number of axons involved in producing an action which we describe as feeling (1). These responses lead to autonomic and voluntary behavioral adjustments to bring our system to homeostasis. Essentially, the extent to which your neurons fire (electrical conduction of a nerve) is determined by the magnitude of your love fire. Unmyelinated (naked) nerves sense external stimuli and internal chemicals more readily than myelinated (covered) nerves, resulting in an accelerated recognition of feelings.
My Chemical Romance
Neuroendocrine factors (hormones acting on the nervous system) like Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and cortisol are endogenous chemicals that allow us to build romantic connections and attachments (2, 6). Feelings of love and mating are eventuated when these chemicals interact with and activate the dopamine reward system. Dopamine evokes desire. An increase in specific dopamine receptors is detected after coupling, attributing them to the maintenance of monogamy.
Love can feel addictive because the dopaminergic pathways associated in love are also implicated in addictive behaviors.
Chemicals flutter as much as our hearts during the course of love. Oxytocin, produced by the hypothalamus and reserved and discharged by the pituitary gland, generates feelings of trust, which is significant in the initial stages of romantic love. Serotonin decreases, while NGF and cortisol increase during the first six months of love when stress and anxiety are elevated. Fortuitously, serotonin, NGF, and cortisol return to pre-love levels after one year into coupledom, which demonstrates less tension in partners after the initial courtship period and the capability of establishing long-term connections. Serotonin is found in the GI tract, CNS, and platelets. It is known to regulate satiety and inhibition of mood, appetite, and sleep. A possibility exists that carriers of a specific polymorphism in the serotonin 5-HT1A receptor are inclined to be single and less likely to form social bonds (5).
When a relationship commences, testosterone is increased in men, but decreased in women (2). However, testosterone levels return to normal after 1 year or more in a relationship and are lower compared to that of singles. Interestingly, women in long-distance relationships have higher testosterone and women in close-distance relationships have lower quantities, so physicality may regulate levels of this hormone.
Untitled Science Art by Dr. Kuver (ca. unknown) shows the color of love, red, aglow in neurons.
Brain, I Loved You First
Distinct constituents of the brain communicate to decode and regulate love. The cortex and subcortex are the brain’s outer and under layer, respectively. They function in consciousness, attention, memory, and thought, and include the forebrain, midbrain, hindbrain, and brainstem. The striatum, which sits in the subcortical forebrain, receives input from the cortex and reports it to the basal ganglia. In essence, this controls you wanting to touch your partner or make advances on love interests. The anterior cingulate cortex is connected to the prefrontal cortex and the reward system. This region regulates emotion formation and processing, blood pressure, heart rate, reward anticipation, empathy, and relieves anxiety.
Why do you stay with that extraordinary hugger?
Touchy feely love feelings get the brain fired up. Image of brain correlates of touch and love by Ebisch et al. 2014.
Because the right ventral tegmental area (VTA), an assemblage of dopamine-producing neurons in the center of the brain, atop the primitive brainstem, tells you that it’s good for you. The VTA partially encompasses the pleasure center/reward circuit that receives info from other areas that signal if fundamental human needs are being fulfilled. It forwards this info to the nucleus accumbens using dopamine. Increased dopamine in the nucleus accumbens tells us to continue our actions in order to keep our fundamental needs satisfied.
Remember the warmy fuzzies of that first kiss or holding hands with your first love?
Our emotional experiences can be affiliated with traces of our physical conditions within the medial insula (1). Located atop the brainstem is the hippocampus, which connects senses and emotions to building new memories. Anticipating romantic caress by your mate correlates to activity in the posterior insula and the pleasantness of the touch is retained in the hippocampus (3).
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1908) represents an embraced kiss where one lover is dominant over the other.
So you approached that person because you thought he/she was hot, but were bummed when they shot you down?
That’s because your caudate is responsive to aesthetics, but also plays a role in emotion. You will circumvent future blunders of the kind because the caudate will compel you remember and learn from that embarrassing episode. Actually, the generation of pleasure and motivation reside in the VTA and caudate. Oooh.
Are you not as scared as you used to be in the early days of your relationship?
Thank the action of oxytocin on the amygdala, which authoritates fear. Fear is diminished or lessened when the amygdala is deactivated by oxytocin, allowing love to flourish.
The Flow of Romance is Unlike That of a Fine Wine
Psychologists have decompounded romantic relationships into Being in Love, Passional Love, and Companionate Love (2). Neurobiologists have assayed characteristics and durations of each phase.
Being in Love consists of about 6 months of stress, excitation, mood swings, insecurity, high levels of cortisol and NGF, but lower levels of serotonin and testosterone. Strong adoration, accelerated affection, and heightened commitment are well noted during this period. Admit that you have felt this lunacy at some point in life.
Passional Love takes place after 6 months to up to a year of the relationship and lasts several years. This stage is comprised by feelings of security, tranquility, and stability. As the aforementioned neuroendocrine levels return to normal, stress declines, and passion, intimacy, and commitment endure. Oxytocin and vasopressin may be highly involved here due to their influence on coupling. Some couples stay in this phase, break up, or continue to level 3 (companionship).
Companionate Love is symbolized by friendship status because passion wanes, but intimacy and commitment persist. The influence of oxytocin and vasopressin supports the sustainment and restoration of coupling.
How’s that for some Valentine’s Day mood lighting?
Closure? You want Closure?
If Picasso couldn’t control his dopamines, would we have had such great art? Would Klimt have gilded his lovers without the elucidation of neural circuitry? The connection between art, psychology, and neurobiology are as close as welcomed embraces because the love for humanity drives them. Current research collectively implies that whichever your realm of love, your brain and body are working overtime. Considering the insight accrued into our state during this delicate time, we can propose methods that alleviate some of the twists along the journey…
Bottom Line: Breath, relax, and don’t boil any rabbits.
Researchers Who Researched
1. Damasio A & Carvalho GB (2013) The nature of feelings: evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 14(2):143-52
2. De Boer A, Van Buel EM, & Ter Horst GJ (2012) Love is more than just a kiss: a neurobiological perspective on love and affection Neurosci. 201:114–124
3. Ebisch SJ, Ferri F, & Gallese V (2014) Touching moments: desire modulates the neural anticipation of active romantic caress. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 8:60
4. Francesco F & Cervone A (2014) Neurobiology of love. Psychiatr Danub. 1(26):266-268
5. Liu, J., Gong, P. & Zhou, X. (2014) The association between romantic relationship status and 5-HT1A gene in young adults. Sci. Rep. 4:7049
6. Savulescu J & Earp BD (2014) Neuroreductionism about sex and love. Think (Lond). 13(38):7–12
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