31 May 2005 @ 18:12, by Raymond Powers
WATCHING NEW LOVE AS IT SEARS THE BRAIN
By Benedict Carey
New York Times
May 31, 2005
New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania,
dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and
prompts out-of-character behavior - compulsive phone calling, serenades,
yelling from rooftops - that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.
Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of
this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of
romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.
In an analysis of the images appearing today in The Journal of
Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic
love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.
It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug
craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or
affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural
activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases
primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term
attachment.
The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from
euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense
when it is withdrawn. In a separate, continuing experiment, the researchers
are analyzing brain images from people who have been rejected by their
lovers.
"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're
out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every
day - why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at
Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected,
some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic
love can be stronger than the will to live."
Brain imaging technology cannot read people's minds, experts caution, and a
phenomenon as many sided and socially influenced as love transcends simple
computer graphics, like those produced by the technique used in the study,
called functional M.R.I.
Still, said Dr. Hans Breiter, director of the Motivation and Emotion
Neuroscience Collaboration at Massachusetts General Hospital, "I distrust
about 95 percent of the M.R.I. literature and I would give this study an
'A'; it really moves the ball in terms of understanding infatuation love."
He added: "The findings fit nicely with a large, growing body of literature
describing a generalized reward and aversion system in the brain, and put
this intellectual construct of love directly onto the same axis as
homeostatic rewards such as food, warmth, craving for drugs."
In the study, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in the Bronx and Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook, led a team that analyzed about 2,500
brain images from 17 college students who were in the first weeks or months
of new love. The students looked at a picture of their beloved while an
M.R.I. machine scanned their brains. The researchers then compared the
images with others taken while the students looked at picture of an
acquaintance.
Functional M.R.I. technology detects increases or decreases of blood flow in
the brain, which reflect changes in neural activity.
In the study, a computer-generated map of particularly active areas showed
hot spots deep in the brain, below conscious awareness, in areas called the
caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area, which communicate with each
other as part of a circuit.
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These areas are dense with cells that produce or receive a brain chemical
called dopamine, which circulates actively when people desire or anticipate
a reward. In studies of gamblers, cocaine users and even people playing
computer games for small amounts of money, these dopamine sites become
extremely active as people score or win, neuroscientists say.
Yet falling in love is among the most irrational of human behaviors, not
merely a matter of satisfying a simple pleasure, or winning a reward. And
the researchers found that one particular spot in the M.R.I. images, in the
caudate nucleus, was especially active in people who scored highly on a
questionnaire measuring passionate love.
This passion-related region was on the opposite side of the brain from
another area that registers physical attractiveness, the researchers found,
and appeared to be involved in longing, desire and the unexplainable tug
that people feel toward one person, among many attractive alternative
partners.
This distinction, between finding someone attractive and desiring him or
her, between liking and wanting, "is all happening in an area of the
mammalian brain that takes care of most basic functions, like eating,
drinking, eye movements, all at an unconscious level, and I don't think
anyone expected this part of the brain to be so specialized," Dr. Brown
said.
The intoxication of new love mellows with time, of course, and the brain
scan findings reflect some evidence of this change, Dr. Fisher said.
In an earlier functional M.R.I. study of romance, published in 2000,
researchers at University College London monitored brain activity in young
men and women who had been in relationships for about two years. The brain
images, also taken while participants looked at photos of their beloved,
showed activation in many of the same areas found in the new study - but
significantly less so, in the region correlated with passionate love, she
said.
In the new study, the researchers also saw individual differences in their
group of smitten lovers, based on how long the participants had been in the
relationships. Compared with the students who were in the first weeks of a
new love, those who had been paired off for a year or more showed
significantly more activity in an area of the brain linked to long-term
commitment.
Last summer, scientists at Emory University in Atlanta reported that
injecting a ratlike animal called a vole with a single gene turned
promiscuous males into stay-at-home dads - by activating precisely the same
area of the brain where researchers in the new study found increased
activity over time.
"This is very suggestive of attachment processes taking place," Dr. Brown
said. "You can almost imagine a time where instead of going to Match.com you
could have a test to find out whether you're an attachment type or not."
One reason new love is so heart-stopping is the possibility, the
ever-present fear, that the feeling may not be entirely requited, that the
dream could suddenly end.
In a follow-up experiment, Dr. Fisher, Dr. Aron and Dr. Brown have carried
out brain scans on 17 other young men and women who recently were dumped by
their lovers. As in the new love study, the researchers compared two sets of
images, one taken when the participants were looking at a photo of a friend,
the other when looking at a picture of their ex.
Although they are still sorting through the images, the investigators have
noticed one preliminary finding: increased activation in an area of the
brain related to the region associated with passionate love. "It seems to
suggest what the psychological literature, poetry and people have long
noticed: that being dumped actually does heighten romantic love, a
phenomenon I call frustration-attraction," Dr. Fisher said in an e-mail
message.
One volunteer in the study was Suzanna Katz, 22, of New York, who suffered
through a breakup with her boyfriend three years ago. Ms. Katz said she
became hyperactive to distract herself after the split, but said she also
had moments of almost physical withdrawal, as if weaning herself from a
drug.
"It had little to do with him, but more with the fact that there was
something there, inside myself, a hope, a knowledge that there's someone out
there for you, and that you're capable of feeling this way, and suddenly I
felt like that was being lost," she said in an interview.
And no wonder. In a series of studies, researchers have found that, among
other processes, new love involves psychologically internalizing a lover,
absorbing elements of the other person's opinions, hobbies, expressions,
character, as well as sharing one's own. "The expansion of the self happens
very rapidly, it's one of the most exhilarating experiences there is, and
short of threatening our survival it is one thing that most motivates us,"
said Dr. Aron, of SUNY, a co-author of the study.
To lose all that, all at once, while still in love, plays havoc with the
emotional, cognitive and deeper reward-driven areas of the brain. But the
heightened activity in these areas inevitably settles down. And the circuits
in the brain related to passion remain intact, the researchers say - intact
and capable in time of flaring to life with someone new.
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