ADELAIDE, Australia — Love can make people do crazy things, and now a new study is explaining why. Scientists in Australia have found that love really does scramble the human brain on a neurological level.
While prior studies have established that romantic love has a connection to the release of oxytocin, often called the “love hormone,” within the brain, this new report documents how a specific area of the brain is responsible for placing our sweethearts on a pedestal when we first fall in love. This project was a joint collaboration featuring The University of South Australia, The Australian National University, and the University of Canberra.
“We actually know very little about the evolution of romantic love,” says ANU lead researcher and PhD student Adam Bode in a university release. “As a result, every finding that tells us about romantic love’s evolution is an important piece of the puzzle that’s just been started.”
“It is thought that romantic love first emerged some five million years ago after we split from our ancestors, the great apes. We know the ancient Greeks philosophized about it a lot, recognizing it both as an amazing as well as traumatic experience. The oldest poem ever to be recovered was in fact a love poem dated to around 2000 BC.”
Study authors explain this project was the first ever to investigate and analyze the link connecting the human mind’s behavioral activation system (BAS) and feelings of romantic love. In all, a total of 1,556 young adults who identified as being “in love” took part in a survey. Questions mostly focused on their emotional reaction to their partner, their behavior around them, and the focus they placed on their loved one above everything else.
Sure enough, researchers discovered that when people fall in love, our brains react differently. Our new romantic flame becomes the center of our lives. Bode explains this study has shed some light on the mysterious mechanisms underlying romantic love.
Dr. Phil Kavanagh, University of Canberra academic and UniSA Adjunct Associate Professor, notes that this work indicates romantic love is associated with changes in behavior as well as emotion.
“We know the role that oxytocin plays in romantic love, because we get waves of it circulating throughout our nervous system and blood stream when we interact with loved ones,” Dr. Kavanagh concludes. “The way that loved ones take on special importance, however, is due to oxytocin combining with dopamine, a chemical that our brain releases during romantic love. Essentially, love activates pathways in the brain associated with positive feelings.”
The study is published in the journal Behavioral Sciences.
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While this finding of a brain chemical release during the initial infatuation stage of a New Romantic relationship is interesting news… I found The Couples Workbook by The School of Life think tank even more interesting… it explains why love that lasts can be cultivated by simple transparency exercises… review:
https://davidbradshaw.medium.com/the-couples-workbook-homework-to-help-love-last-66d3455ff778
I can vouch for the veracity of this study….3 times.
Why “falling” in ‘love’?
Because THE commandment is to “LOVE the Lord thy God with A-L-L”… (of yourself).
Correction:
Why “falling” in ‘love’? Because THE commandment is to “LOVE the Lord thy God with A-L-L”… (of yourself). The “neighbor” cannot be ‘the guy next door”, but only one’s spiritual self, for every human is UNIQUE (one of a kind) and spirit is the essential existence with which one is to unify for eternal existence, “in earth as it is in heaven”.
Of course
Water is wet
Definitely. Almost an out of body experience
How much they spend of our taxes to conduct these studies?
Because I’m not in love with the stupid waste.
“It is thought that romantic love first emerged some five million years ago after we split from our ancestors, the great apes.” What a load of hogwash evolution is! They make up claims with no way of ever proving them. All they have to go by are fossilized human skulls, that’s all! The theory of evolution is nothing more than secular religion.
And in their next study, these scientists will see if a poke in the eye with a sharp stick hurts.
We didn’t come from apes, tho’.
Nature most likely put this mechanism in place to ensure the survival of the species. If humans were only confronted with the harsh reality of what it is like to live day in and day out with another human being without a “brain shot” of feel goodness, marriage would never take place. There would only be random mating sort of what is going on in today’s “modern” society
We need a “study” to confirm this? Could have interviewed a teenager.
Well. that explains a lot. Very powerful, but doesn’t always work out in the end, does it?
Duh ! The brain in the other head takes over…
What about dopamine? Or is that the lust molecule not the love ?molecule
All I do is get a hard on.
If they actually watched “apes” (great or otherwise) they would see that ‘love’ is present in them too. But then if you watch swans, penguins or any of a number of other species they would observe ‘love’ in most animals.
Meeting annoying people changes the brain, as do fat people, ugly people, dangerous people and cute little kittens and puppies.
Just think, people get paid for this nonsense.