THE’love of a mother and a father for their child, that of a man or a woman for their other half, the soul mate. Where does love live? Where does this feeling that can bind people so deeply originate? In reality it is not just a question of ‘heart’, but of brain. And a team of scientists, led by researcher-philosopher Pärttyli Rinne who has been tracking down love by studying the subject for years, has discovered exactly the ‘house’ in a corner of our mind (or rather more than one).
The authors of the study published in the journal ‘Cerebral Cortex’, experts from Aalto University in Finland, have taken the search for love to a whole new level, revealing that different types of this feeling light up different parts of the brain. And in fact we use the word love, they point out, in a disconcerting range of contexts, from sexual adoration to parental love to love of nature. The researchers’ idea is that a more complete image of the brain could shed light on why we use the same word for such a diverse collection of human experiences. The first is that which binds a parent to a child. “You see your newborn baby for the first time. The baby is soft, healthy and strong: the greatest wonder of your life. You feel love for the little one.” The statement was one of many simple scenarios presented to 55 parents, who described themselves as being in a loving relationship with their baby.
Researchers at the Finnish university used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity while people enrolled in the study ruminated on short stories related to 6 different types of love. The result? Love for children generated the most brain activity, closely followed by romantic love. “We now provide a more complete picture of the brain activity associated with different types of love than previous research has,” Rinne says. “The activation pattern for love is generated in social situations in the basal ganglia, midline of the forehead, precuneus, and temporoparietal junction on the sides of the back of the head.” But parental love seems to have an edge: “There was profound activation in the brain’s reward system in the striatum while imagining the feeling in question, and this was not seen for any other type of love,” Rinne says.
Also love for romantic partners, friends, strangers, pets, and nature were part of the study. According to the research, brain activity is influenced not only by the proximity of the object of love, but also by whether it is a human, another species, or nature. Not surprisingly, compassionate love for strangers was less rewarding and caused less brain activation than love in close relationships, the authors reason. While another element that stands out is that love for nature activated the reward system and the visual areas of the brain, but not the social brain areas.
Pet owners, the authors continue, can be identified by brain activity. The biggest surprise, the scientists note, was that the brain areas associated with love between people were very similar, with differences mainly in the intensity of activation. All types of interpersonal love, in fact, activated areas of the brain associated with social cognition, in contrast to love for pets or nature. “You’re at home, lying on the couch, and your pet cat comes over to you. The cat snuggles up to you and purrs sleepily. You love your pet.” On average, the subjects’ brain responses to a statement like this revealed whether or not they shared their life with a furry friend.
“When you look at pet love and the brain activity associated with it, the social areas of the brain statistically reveal whether or not the person is a pet owner. When it comes to pet owners, these areas are more activated than when it comes to non-pet owners,” Rinne says.
Love arousals were controlled in the study with neutral stories in which very little happened. For example, looking out the bus window or absentmindedly brushing one’s teeth. After listening to a professional actor’s version of each “love story,” participants were asked to imagine each emotion for 10 seconds.
This isn’t the first attempt to find love for Rinne and his team, which includes researchers Juha Lahnakoski, Heini Saarimäki, Mikke Tavast, Mikko Sams, and Linda Henriksson. The experts have undertaken several studies aimed at deepening our scientific understanding of human emotions. The team published research mapping subjects’ bodily experiences of love a year ago, with the previous study also linking stronger bodily experiences of love to close interpersonal relationships. Understanding the neural mechanisms of love, they note, can not only help guide philosophical discussions about the nature of love, consciousness, and human relationships. The researchers also hope their work could improve mental health interventions for conditions such as attachment disorders, depression, or relationship problems.
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