February 14, 2021 • 4 mins
Feelings of euphoria leading to obsessive behavior and potentially life-ruining decisions: Love can be as powerful as any drug. Learn how love affects the brain in this classic episode of BrainStuff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a
classic brain Stuff episode. This is actually a script that
we wrote back when we were doing brain Stuff videos,
so I tried to adapt it to work without visuals.
In this one, we get into the sticky science of
whether being in love can actually be an addiction. Hey,
(00:26):
they're brain Stuff Lauring vogel Bomb. Here, nicotine, chocolate, alcohol, opioids, work, gambling, sex, food,
You might as well face it. Life is basically a
gauntlet of substances and behaviors that humans can become obsessed
with and dependent on. But what about love? Not just sex,
but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it
(00:47):
be addictive? The notion of obsessive, all consuming, and even
addictive love goes back literally thousands of years. The ancient
Greek poets Sappho wrote about watching her lover marry someone else,
and she describes being seized with trembling, drenched in cold sweat,
and feeling nearly dead. She might as well be describing
opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love.
(01:09):
Romantic love does have a lot of external features. In
common with drug addiction, initial feelings of bliss and euphoria
and obsessive fixated behavior, often leading to poor, potentially life
ruining decisions. A twenty ten paper from the New York
Academy of Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing
drug dependence include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts
(01:32):
to quit. Sound anything like your relationship with your X.
If so, you're certainly not alone, but is there any
more measurable basis for thinking love can be considered an
addiction in the brain. Actually, yes, let's talk brain imaging.
One way that addiction hijacks the human brain is by
taking advantage of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the
(01:54):
mesolimbic dopamine system, which includes the ventral tegmental area and
the nucleus incumbents. This is part of the nervous system
that gives us internal rewards when we do something with
an evolutionary benefit, like eating or having sex. Essentially, it's
how the brain tells itself, Hey, what you just did?
Do that again and again and again, whether it's eating
(02:15):
a nutritious meal or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back in two
thousand and five, a study in the Journal of Neurophysiology
used f m r I to look at the brains
of test subjects who self reported that they were intensely
in love with someone else. When these lovebirds were shown
pictures of the people they adored, there was activation in
sections of that same mammalian reward and motivation system, for example,
(02:37):
the right ventral tech mental area. But that's not all.
A follow up study in two looked at what happened
to the brains of men and women who had been
rejected but reported that they were still deeply in love.
It wasn't pretty. When heartbroken lovers were forced to look
at pictures of their exes, there was elevated activity in
our old friends, the ventral tech mental area, and the
(02:57):
nucleus incumbents. Researchers point it out that the rejected lovers
showed several neural correlates in common with the brain activity
of cocaine addicts craving their drug, So at the level
of brain chemistry, romantic love can be kind of like
substance addiction. But there are reasons why you might not
want to refer to your latest crush as a full
on addiction. Just yet. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical
(03:19):
Manual of Mental Disorders does not officially recognize love addiction,
and while cravings for love can be devastating when they're
unrequited or self destructive, they can also be deeply fulfilling
in a way that no drug habit ever could be.
Today's episode was written by Joe McCormick and produced by
(03:41):
Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on this and
lots of other topics about brain Stuff, visit howstworks dot com.
Brain Stuff is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a
classic brain Stuff episode. This is actually a script that
we wrote back when we were doing brain Stuff videos,
so I tried to adapt it to work without visuals.
In this one, we get into the sticky science of
whether being in love can actually be an addiction. Hey,
(00:26):
they're brain Stuff Lauring vogel Bomb. Here, nicotine, chocolate, alcohol, opioids, work, gambling, sex, food,
You might as well face it. Life is basically a
gauntlet of substances and behaviors that humans can become obsessed
with and dependent on. But what about love? Not just sex,
but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it
(00:47):
be addictive? The notion of obsessive, all consuming, and even
addictive love goes back literally thousands of years. The ancient
Greek poets Sappho wrote about watching her lover marry someone else,
and she describes being seized with trembling, drenched in cold sweat,
and feeling nearly dead. She might as well be describing
opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love.
(01:09):
Romantic love does have a lot of external features. In
common with drug addiction, initial feelings of bliss and euphoria
and obsessive fixated behavior, often leading to poor, potentially life
ruining decisions. A twenty ten paper from the New York
Academy of Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing
drug dependence include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts
(01:32):
to quit. Sound anything like your relationship with your X.
If so, you're certainly not alone, but is there any
more measurable basis for thinking love can be considered an
addiction in the brain. Actually, yes, let's talk brain imaging.
One way that addiction hijacks the human brain is by
taking advantage of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the
(01:54):
mesolimbic dopamine system, which includes the ventral tegmental area and
the nucleus incumbents. This is part of the nervous system
that gives us internal rewards when we do something with
an evolutionary benefit, like eating or having sex. Essentially, it's
how the brain tells itself, Hey, what you just did?
Do that again and again and again, whether it's eating
(02:15):
a nutritious meal or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back in two
thousand and five, a study in the Journal of Neurophysiology
used f m r I to look at the brains
of test subjects who self reported that they were intensely
in love with someone else. When these lovebirds were shown
pictures of the people they adored, there was activation in
sections of that same mammalian reward and motivation system, for example,
(02:37):
the right ventral tech mental area. But that's not all.
A follow up study in two looked at what happened
to the brains of men and women who had been
rejected but reported that they were still deeply in love.
It wasn't pretty. When heartbroken lovers were forced to look
at pictures of their exes, there was elevated activity in
our old friends, the ventral tech mental area, and the
(02:57):
nucleus incumbents. Researchers point it out that the rejected lovers
showed several neural correlates in common with the brain activity
of cocaine addicts craving their drug, So at the level
of brain chemistry, romantic love can be kind of like
substance addiction. But there are reasons why you might not
want to refer to your latest crush as a full
on addiction. Just yet. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical
(03:19):
Manual of Mental Disorders does not officially recognize love addiction,
and while cravings for love can be devastating when they're
unrequited or self destructive, they can also be deeply fulfilling
in a way that no drug habit ever could be.
Today's episode was written by Joe McCormick and produced by
(03:41):
Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on this and
lots of other topics about brain Stuff, visit howstworks dot com.
Brain Stuff is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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