Science of love: It really is all in the mind

Chinese researchers are using MRI scans to track the emotion's effects. Photo / 123RF

It is one of life's most enduring mysteries. A question that music, poetry, myth and legend have, for thousands of years, tried but failed to answer.

However, we may now be a step closer to discovering what love is, thanks to a scientific study that has obtained the first empirical evidence of love-related alterations in the brain.

A team of researchers from universities in China and New York used MRI scans to track the physical effects of love on the brain and has pieced together a "love map" of the human mind.

The study found that several areas of the brain showed increased activity in those who were in love, including in the parts of the brain linked to reward and motivation. The researchers said their results shed light on the "underlying mechanisms of romantic love" and would pave the way for a brain scan that could act as a "love test".

Scientists recruited 100 students from Southwest University in Chongqing, China, who were divided into three groups according to their relationship status: an "in-love" group, comprised of those who were in love at the time; an "ended-love" group, who had recently ended loving relationships; and a "single" group, who had never been in love.

Participants were told not to think of anything while their brains were scanned, so that researchers could monitor the differences between the brains of students in all three groups.

Those from the "in love" category showed increased activity in several areas of the brain, including in parts that deal with reward, motivation, and emotion regulation, as well as in the social cognition network. The amount of activity in some parts positively correlated with the duration of love for the "in love" group. For the "ended love" group, the longer they had been out of love, the lower the amount of activity detected in these areas of the brain.

The researchers said that their study, entitled Love-related changes in the brain: a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study, had successfully obtained the "first empirical evidence of love-related alterations in brain functional architecture".

They said the results "shed light on the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of romantic love by investigating intrinsic brain activity". The team, led by Prof Xiaochu Zhang of the University of Science and Technology of China, in Hefei, noted that in the last century romantic love had become a topic of interest for scientists, in particular psychologists, but said it is only in the past few decades that scientific interest had turned to the neurological processes of romantic love.

Prof Zhang said that until now it had not been known whether romantic love also affected the functional architecture of the brain.

The study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, was jointly compiled by scientists from Southwest University, the University of Science and Technology of China and from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.