Love has long been thought of as an abstract concept, or a feeling best expressed through poetry or song, but new research from universities in Ny and China shows that it’s something quite different. They feel that science might actually have the ability to know if one is in love.
The study, published online last month in the journal , used functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) scans to determine the physical effects of love on the activity in different regions of a persons mind.
In so doing, they were effectively able create what refers to like a “love map” of the human mind, showing the first empirical evidence of physical modifications in the mind caused by love. Their research demonstrated that the brains of people that reported that they were for each other had increased activity within the parts of the brain associated to motivation and reward.
The study authors, who included scientists from Southwest University, the University of Science and Technology of China and from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, explained that their findings provided new insight into the “underlying mechanisms of romantic love,” which may ultimately lead to a brain scan that may test if a person was truly for each other.
They recruited 100 students from Southwest University, which is located in the Chinese city of Chongqing, and divided them into three groups according to their current relationship status: someone who have been for each other, an organization which had recently broken off romances, and something made up of single women and men who said that they’d never been in love.
Simultaneously individuals were expected to not consider anything when they underwent rsfMRI scans so the variations in the brains of three groups might be monitored. They found that the “in love” category showed increased activity in several regions, including the areas of the mind coping with reward, motivation, emotional regulation, and social cognition.
Furthermore, the amount of activity in some of those parts was associated with the amount of time the individual have been in love. For that “ended love” group, the study authors found that the game levels in those regions decreased because the period of time since relationships came to an end increased, suggesting that receding of love undoes these changes towards the brain.
Within their study, they wrote their research “provides [the] first empirical evidence of love-related alterations in brain functional architecture. Furthermore, the outcomes shed light on the actual neural mechanisms of romantic love, and demonstrates the possibility of applying a resting-state fMRI approach for investigating romantic love.”
“Understanding positive emotional states may be crucial for more development of treatment,” she added. “This research may be relevant for developing treatment for those who have difficulty engaging in social relationships, interventions to relieve the negative impact of breakup, and in treatment of psychiatric disorders generally.”
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