What causes being in love in our brain? An investigation carried out by the University of Sciences and Technology of Hanui (China) has determined that love changes the brain; literally, since more than 10 areas of the brain undergo modifications in their activity levels when we are in that motivational state in which we want to maintain a close relationship with someone very specific.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers conducted an experiment with 100 university students who were divided into three groups: those who claimed to be in love, those who did not have a partner, and those who had recently ended a relationship. All of them were asked to blank their minds and underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) test to record activity levels in different areas of the brain.
Examination of the data revealed that the brains of the lovers in love presented at least a dozen differently shaped zones, which were activated in a coordinated manner only in them, and that they registered a constant increase in activity. In the rest of the participants, the only outstanding activity was that of the caudate nucleus. These results show that love increases activity in areas of the brain related to motivation, cognitive networks, reward or social skills and, the more time has elapsed since a romantic breakup, the lower the activity in these areas, based on the results of brain scans.
“It is the first empirical proof that love alters the functional architecture of the brain,” the authors point out. And it is the first study that records the activity of the brain in a state of rest of young people in love and compares this brain activity with that of young people without a partner .
The study has been published in the journal Frontiers of Human Neurosicence .
