A breakup or the loss of a loved one can feel like withdrawal. Their absence can evoke yearning and physical pain, akin to an addiction no longer fed. This feeling of addiction has intrigued neuroscientists, who are now shedding light on what love looks like in the brain.
Research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex explored six different types of love, including romantic partners, friends, strangers, pets, and nature. Pärttyli Rinne from Aalto University in Finland, who led the study, stated, "Basically, we carved out maps of brain areas for different types of love."
The researchers discovered that the brain activates different regions involved in social cognition depending on the type of love. Rinne explained, "The brain activity associated with a feeling of love depends on its object," noting variations in love for family members versus pets.
Despite these differences, the brain's reward and addiction system was activated across all types of love. Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist at Einstein College of Medicine in New York, remarked, "We're beginning to build a framework of what the brain looks like when people are in love." Brown, who was not involved in the Finnish study, added that it reinforces the idea that romantic love and long-term attachments engage the brain's reward system.
The study involved 55 participants and utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), making it the largest study to date on the brain activity associated with love. Rinne noted, "Our results demonstrate that love in closer interpersonal relationships—like for one's child, romantic partner, and friend—is associated with significantly stronger activation in the brain's reward system than love for strangers, pets, or nature."
Furthermore, love for people activates brain areas tied to thinking, feeling, and understanding—collectively known as social cognition. For pet owners, love for pets engaged these social brain regions more significantly than in those without pets.
While love for nature or art is also profound, it is processed differently than romantic or familial love. Love for nature, for instance, activated the brain's reward system and visual areas related to landscapes but did not engage social cognition regions.
Previous neuroimaging studies in the US, UK, and China have indicated that feelings of love activate brain regions linked to reward, attachment, motivation, and reinforcement learning. Rinne's study strengthens these findings with a larger and culturally diverse group of participants from Finland.
Interestingly, love appears to be an ancient emotion, rooted in evolutionary biology. The systems activated during feelings of love are located in the brain's more primitive areas, sometimes referred to as reptilian systems. Rinne pointed out that these systems also activate when monogamous prairie voles form pair bonds, suggesting a biological foundation for human love experiences inherited from our mammalian ancestors.
While it remains challenging to ascertain whether animals experience love like humans, scientists believe they form similar rewarding attachments. Brown emphasized that the reptilian reward brain regions likely influence our higher thoughts when in love, stating, "We are addicted to the people we love. When we lose someone, it's like withdrawing from a drug."
Rinne concluded that as human cultures advanced, our experiences of love expanded beyond biological influences to include cultural and psychological factors. This evolution led us to extend our affections to include not only family and friends but also pets and even abstract concepts like art and nature.
Ultimately, Rinne's study helps clarify why we feel stronger affection for those close to us compared to strangers, even though the underlying brain processes of affection remain consistent across all interpersonal relationships. This might explain why many religions and philosophical traditions refer to benevolence towards others as 'neighbourly love' or 'loving-kindness,' even if it feels less intense than love for close connections.