An Insight into the Neurobiology of Love

We can’t tell what you feel in love, but science can definitely tell you what makes you feel that! Bear with us through the length article if you want to know why you spend sleepless nights in love, thinking about that special one. You must have noticed the sweet fall in to your appetite on spotting your dear one? Love can be explained as an intense feeling of deep affection or fondness for a person or a thing. Through the eyes of neuroscience, love seems to be a complex rewarding phenomenon built on trust, belief, and amusement that involves a motivation system of attachment, attraction, and prurience.

From the biological perspective, these three motivation pillars have their own purposes and are highly regulated. Prurience mediated by sex hormones viz. testosterone, and estrogen, seeks sexual union with a compatible partner to ensure the continuation of species. While attraction is enforced by dopamine and noradrenaline, the serotonergic system mediates partner selection, and attachment ensures affiliative connections with the partner to fulfill parental duties. Vasopressin and oxytocin are hormones well-known for mediating partner selection and attachment, enhancing memory and attention span.

Love is harboring an emotional bond with someone for whom one yearns for. Whilst having the sensory epiphany that one desires. Etymologically, words complying with “desire,” “yearning” and “satisfaction” contribute to "love" which further has a root in “libido”. The psychological sense of love can be interpreted as referring to the satisfaction of a yearning, which may be associated with the obtaining of certain sensory stimulation. Love, thus, bears a close relationship not only with reward and amusement phenomena but also with appetitive and addictive behaviors.

The intense feeling of love induces a sense of euphoria or a ‘strong feeling of happiness.’ Such romantic feelings are associated with high concentrations of the neuro-modulator, which links to a sense of reward, i.e., dopamine. Dopamine, released by the hypothalamus, puts our minds in a ‘feel good’ state when in love or with the intake of exogenous opioid drugs such as cocaine. Increasing dopamine levels are co-associated with decreasing concentrations of serotonin. Interestingly, people with obsessive-compulsive disorder also have low levels of serotonin, justifying the obsession with a person when in love. High levels of dopamine, together with noradrenaline and decreased serotonin, reduce appetite and induce insomnia.

Now you know why you can’t eat or sleep when in love!

What about that pounding in your chest? Those beats which give goose-bumps, what about them?

Well, this is mediated by noradrenaline which puts our organs in a more active state at a higher cost in terms of energy. Most of the physical signals of being attracted to someone, such as pupil dilation and muscular tension, are regulated by noradrenaline through increasing blood flow. Noradrenaline and adrenaline, both released from the adrenal medulla in stress conditions, induce a Flight or Fight response, and the former makes a love addict do unimaginable actions. Oxytocin and Vasopressin, sexual behavior-promoting hormones, are closely associated with one’s social abilities. Oxytocin decreases anger levels, and Vasopressin increases territorial behaviors leading to a stress-free mind for affiliative connections. It is observed that women are more sensitive to oxytocin, while vasopressin influence is greater in men. Induction of sexual sensory processing by modulating corticoid release, reward & limbic processing is also done by Oxytocin and Vasopressin.

Author: Sanyam Jain

Contributor: Rashi Sharma

Illustrative Cover By: Sanskar Srivastava

Editor: Aviral Srivastava