February 15, 2018 • 3 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 episode of BrainStuff.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, they
are brain stuff, luring, 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,
(00:24):
but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it
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
(00:45):
opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love.
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, ventually life
ruining decisions. A paper from the New York Academy of
Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing drug dependence
(01:08):
include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts 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
(01:28):
that addiction hijacks the human brain is by taking advantage
of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the mesolimbic dopamine system,
which includes the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbents.
And 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
(01:49):
tells itself, Hey, what you just did? Do that again
and again and again, whether it's eating a nutritious meal
or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back into thousand 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,
(02:12):
there was activation in sections of that same mammalian reward
and motivation system, for example, 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
(02:33):
was elevated activity in our old friends, the ventral tech
mental area, and the nucleus incumbents. Researchers pointed 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
(02:55):
as a full on addiction just yet. For example, the
Diagnostic and Statistical 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
(03:19):
and produced by Tristan McNeil. If you're listening to this
the day it comes out, Happy Valentine's Day. If you
don't celebrate, it's also National Ferris Wheel Day in the
United States. I hope you have an excellent day regardless,
and of course, for more on this and lots of
other brainy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works
dot com.
Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, they
are brain stuff, luring, 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,
(00:24):
but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it
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
(00:45):
opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love.
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, ventually life
ruining decisions. A paper from the New York Academy of
Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing drug dependence
(01:08):
include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts 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
(01:28):
that addiction hijacks the human brain is by taking advantage
of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the mesolimbic dopamine system,
which includes the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbents.
And 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
(01:49):
tells itself, Hey, what you just did? Do that again
and again and again, whether it's eating a nutritious meal
or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back into thousand 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,
(02:12):
there was activation in sections of that same mammalian reward
and motivation system, for example, 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
(02:33):
was elevated activity in our old friends, the ventral tech
mental area, and the nucleus incumbents. Researchers pointed 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
(02:55):
as a full on addiction just yet. For example, the
Diagnostic and Statistical 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
(03:19):
and produced by Tristan McNeil. If you're listening to this
the day it comes out, Happy Valentine's Day. If you
don't celebrate, it's also National Ferris Wheel Day in the
United States. I hope you have an excellent day regardless,
and of course, for more on this and lots of
other brainy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works
dot com.
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