“Love is like a drug.” This saying commonly used to exaggerate the power of love has recently been proven to have some scientific ground.
Romance really triggers a similar reaction in the part of the brain that reacts to addiction to drugs scientists have revealed. The Daily Mail reported the results of experiments conducted by American neuroscientist, Lucy Brown, and her colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, through its website on Feb. 13.
Also it is revealed that “love” is the most intense emotion that people could ever feel.
In an experiment, 10 women and seven men, who claim that they “totally fell in love,” were shown photographs of their lovers. While they were doing so, the research team scanned MRI images of the participants’ brain response.
When a person is blinded by love, the part related to motive and reward in one’s brain is stimulated.
As all human beings have an inherent instinct to choose “good partners,” the instinct itself motivates them to do anything _ or even something extreme -- to gain “love.”
Then, if they eventually succeed in finding someone who deserves such efforts, they feel “rewarded.”
“Intense passionate love uses the same system in the brain that is activated when a person is addicted to drugs,” said co-author Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
“You can feel happy when you're in love, but you can also feel anxious,” says Prof. Brown, explaining that “the reward part of the brain -- or pleasure center -- is essential to our survival as this drives the desire to have sex.”
They also found that the length of time couples spent together scarcely influenced the intensity of their feelings. The length of their relationships ranged from one month to two years.
“For most people, as love lasts longer, there is a slow decline in passionate love but a growth in bonding”, Dr. Aron said. “That emotional bond allows for the partners to stay together long enough to have and raise children,” he added.