In this article titled "Brain Study Reveals Secrets to Staying Madly in Love", psychologists discuss what makes long-term love possible on a brain level and compare couples who have been married for years to those that have newly fallen in love. The researchers did this by scanning the brains using functional MRIs to monitor the brain activity of the different individuals that were in love. These individuals had been married for an average of 21 years!
The researches created a list of 5 "symptoms" of intense love that were frequently found in newly in love couples and applied it to the research of the couples who have been in love for a long time. They then recorded neural activity taken during the fMRI. The participants were shown pictures of their spouse as well as control pictures of a friend and someone they weren't as well familiar with.
The results of the study helped to reveal which parts of the brain are responsible for the various "symptoms" of intense love (ex: the posterior hippocampus is responsible for the interest). It also helped to compare the newly in love individuals to the individuals who have been married for a long time. The study concluded that people that have been married for a long time were just as strong, if not stronger in every area of study as newly in love couples were. In long-term love participants many more regions of the brain were in use than the newly in love participants. The study essentially proved that love can last! Now if only someone could only explain high divorce rates these days...
Three things I learned from the article:
- Data suggests that the brain looks at a long-term love relationship as a goal oriented behavior to attain rewards such as feeling secure, being a part of a union together, or feeling less stressed.
- The dorsal Raphe is a part of the brain known for involvement to the body's reaction to pain and stress. In the study of the neural activity of the individuals who were in love, the dorsal Raphe were activated in intense romantic love. This is what connects love with stress and makes one of the goals of long-term love a feeling of being less stressed.
- Regions of the brain that are rich in dopamine is where long-term love activity is most prevalent.
One thing I am still confused about:
The article referenced the difference between friendship-based love and romantic love. What was confusing about it is that it didn't exactly specify what friendship-based love was and what romantic love was. It mentioned something about a control picture of a friend being shown to the person in the fMRI as a control image, so I thought it meant liking solely based on friendship, but I wasn't sure because of the terminology used. The article said to make sure the difference between "liking" and "wanting" was understood. It also said that "liking" was just based on emotion while "romantic love" was based on motivation. This made me think of the terminology of "liking" being used to describe people before they fall in love. That part was not made clear to me as a reader.
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