Your Brain on Love-WCC STEM Scholars Newsletter May 2023

Earlier this month, an up-and-coming country singer named Karley Scott Collins released a new single called Brain on Love. According to Collins, she “got the idea for this song after reading an article about how scientists had proven that the chemical reactions your brain has when you’re falling in love are virtually identical to the ones people have on drugs. Being in love completely rewires your brain to the point where everything reminds you of that person, and it’s all you can think about. It keeps you up at night, you can’t eat, all you want to do is see that person again.” Hearing Collins’s song and her discussion of it inspired me to do more research on the topic, and this article is analysis of the science behind why love is addictive and how when it ends, it causes withdrawal symptoms, just like those of drugs.

Ever since the dawn of human history, the feelings of love have entranced our imagination. We have all experienced what it was like to fall in love for the first time in the romantic sense, and we have all felt the love for our family and friends. But the magic of love, from a biological standpoint, is surprisingly not found in the heart; the real enchantment is found in the brain. When we fall in love, the pleasure centers in our brains, called the ventral tegmental area, are activated, releasing the hormones dopamine and norepinephrine. These hormones create a euphoria similar to that of drugs such as cocaine or heroin.

Likewise, the areas of our brains that deal with pain are more disengaged, so as a result, we also have a romanticized view of the world around us, as well as our love interest. Not only do we recognize love as a feeling, but we also have a mental drive for it as well. The more we think about that person, the more we crave and desire to spend time with them. On top of that, the hormone oxytocin is released from an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain’s rewards system. While there is still much to know why love works, we all know when we experience it.

There are many things in life that we can get addicted to: cigarettes, alcohol, and other drugs, gambling, sex/pornography, and technology. Our society looks down upon these addictions as damaging to the human mind and body. But what about love? Can we be addicted to that? The answer is, surprisingly, yes. Whenever we develop infatuations or romantic feelings for another person, we experience feelings of happiness and excitement. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes those strong emotions can lead to obsessive behavior, which can result in bad decision-making. And this is not just limited to our actions, but also our brain activity. According to a study carried out by the Journal of Neurophysiology, test subjects who were shown pictures of their love interests had the ventral tegmental area, which releases the feel-good hormone dopamine, activated. This is very similar to how the brains of drug users react when under the influence of said drug. Therefore, in many ways, be it our behavior or our brain activity and chemistry, being in love with someone is like drug addiction. However, this is not something to be overly concerned about. The “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” doesn't feature “love addiction” as a mental disorder. While our yearning to love and be loved can be painful when it’s one-sided or results in self-destructive behavior, it can be fulfilling when it is healthy.

If anyone has fallen in love before, he or she is also likely aware of how painful it is to break up with that special someone. People who have had breakups experience not just pain in an emotional sense such as loneliness, anger, or depression, but also in a physical sense. As mentioned earlier, the major neurotransmitters involved when someone falls in love are dopamine and oxytocin, and the effects on the brain are similar to those under the influence of drugs. Unsurprisingly, when we go through a breakup, the results can be very similar to withdrawal. Just like it can be hard to break a drug addiction, it can be very hard to move on from the one you loved. Even if it’s not good for us to do so, we still find ourselves going to our exes’ social media to look at their photos, reminding us of the good times we had with in order to get that same symptoms. Another aspect that explains why breakups can be so painful goes back how we feature our partners as part of our identity, when we lose our partners, it’s as if a part of our identity has been taken from us. A study carried out by researchers at Rutgers, Einstein Medicine and Stony Brook discovered that when individuals who experienced breakups looked at photos of their exes, their brains had high activation in the ventral tegmental area, ventral striatum, prefrontal cortex, and cingulate gyrus. These areas are very much related to cravings and regulation that result from drug addiction. There were even some parallels in the ventral tegmental area between those who recently broke up and those were still in love with their partners. Essentially, your brain will always crave for the one you love, just as if he or she were a drug. So, when that person is no longer in your life, the emotional and physical pain is immense. However, much like a drug addiction, you can seek help to recover and move on from it. It is worth noting that we are adapted to have multiple relationships come and go throughout our lives, just like habits. Works cited

Acevedo, B. P., Aron, A., Fisher, H. E., & Brown, L. L. (2011). Neural correlates of long-term intense romantic love. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 7(2), 145–159.

Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L. (2005). Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 94(1), 327–337.

Fisher, H. E., Brown, L. L., Aron, A., Strong, G., & Mashek, D. (2010). Reward, addiction, and emotion regulation systems associated with rejection in Love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(1), 51–60.

Frascella, J., Potenza, M. N., Brown, L. L., & Childress, A. R. (2010). Shared brain vulnerabilities open the way for nonsubstance addictions: Carving Addiction at a new joint? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1187(1), 294–315.

Najib, A., Lorberbaum, J. P., Kose, S., Bohning, D. E., & George, M. S. (2004). Regional brain activity in women grieving a romantic relationship breakup. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161(12), 2245–2256.

Zeki, S. (2007) The Neurobiology of Love. FEBS Letters, 581(14), 2575–2579.