Romantic love: an fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice
- PMID: 16255001
- DOI: 10.1002/cne.20772
Romantic love: an fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice
Abstract
Scientists have described myriad traits in mammalian and avian species that evolved to attract mates. But the brain mechanisms by which conspecifics become attracted to these traits is largely unknown. Yet mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices, and data suggest that this "attraction system" is associated with the dopaminergic reward system. It has been proposed that intense romantic love, a cross-cultural universal, is a developed form of this attraction system. To determine the neural mechanisms associated with romantic love we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and studied 17 people who were intensely "in love" (Aron et al. [2005] J Neurophysiol 94:327-337). Activation specific to the beloved occurred in the right ventral tegmental area and right caudate nucleus, dopamine-rich areas associated with mammalian reward and motivation. These and other results suggest that dopaminergic reward pathways contribute to the "general arousal" component of romantic love; romantic love is primarily a motivation system, rather than an emotion; this drive is distinct from the sex drive; romantic love changes across time; and romantic love shares biobehavioral similarities with mammalian attraction. We propose that this attraction mechanism evolved to enable individuals to focus their mating energy on specific others, thereby conserving energy and facilitating mate choice-a primary aspect of reproduction. Last, the corticostriate system, with its potential for combining diverse cortical information with reward signals, is an excellent anatomical substrate for the complex factors contributing to romantic love and mate choice.
(c) 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Similar articles
-
Reward and motivation systems: a brain mapping study of early-stage intense romantic love in Chinese participants.Hum Brain Mapp. 2011 Feb;32(2):249-57. doi: 10.1002/hbm.21017. Hum Brain Mapp. 2011. PMID: 21229613 Free PMC article.
-
Reward, addiction, and emotion regulation systems associated with rejection in love.J Neurophysiol. 2010 Jul;104(1):51-60. doi: 10.1152/jn.00784.2009. Epub 2010 May 5. J Neurophysiol. 2010. PMID: 20445032
-
Romantic love: a mammalian brain system for mate choice.Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2006 Dec 29;361(1476):2173-86. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2006.1938. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2006. PMID: 17118931 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love.J Neurophysiol. 2005 Jul;94(1):327-37. doi: 10.1152/jn.00838.2004. Epub 2005 May 31. J Neurophysiol. 2005. PMID: 15928068
-
The neural mechanisms of mate choice: a hypothesis.Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2002 Dec;23 Suppl 4:92-7. Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2002. PMID: 12496739 Review.
Cited by
-
Refuting Six Misconceptions about Romantic Love.Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 May 2;14(5):383. doi: 10.3390/bs14050383. Behav Sci (Basel). 2024. PMID: 38785874 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Familiarity Processing through Faces and Names: Insights from Multivoxel Pattern Analysis.Brain Sci. 2023 Dec 30;14(1):39. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14010039. Brain Sci. 2023. PMID: 38248254 Free PMC article.
-
Romantic love evolved by co-opting mother-infant bonding.Front Psychol. 2023 Oct 17;14:1176067. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1176067. eCollection 2023. Front Psychol. 2023. PMID: 37915523 Free PMC article.
-
The Neurobiology of Love and Pair Bonding from Human and Animal Perspectives.Biology (Basel). 2023 Jun 12;12(6):844. doi: 10.3390/biology12060844. Biology (Basel). 2023. PMID: 37372130 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Neuroimaging of human and non-human animal emotion and affect in the context of social relationships.Front Behav Neurosci. 2022 Oct 21;16:994504. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2022.994504. eCollection 2022. Front Behav Neurosci. 2022. PMID: 36338883 Free PMC article. Review.
Publication types
MeSH terms
Substances
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Medical