Researchers Believe Romantic Love is an Addiction

Posted on July 8, 2010

LiveScience.com reports that new brain research appears to confirm that yearning for a lost love can be as bad as addiction cravings. The researchers looked at brain scans of heartbroken men and women while they were viewing photographs of their former partners. The regions of the brain that were activated are the areas of the brain associated with addictions cravings, physical pain and distress. LiveScience.com says during the brain scans, brain regions known as the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex were activated - these regions are associated with cocaine addiction and cigarette addiction.

The researchers found that, for heartbroken men and women, looking at photographs of former partners activated regions in the brain associated with rewards, addiction cravings, control of emotions, feelings of attachment and physical pain and distress.
The results provide insight into why it might be hard for some people to get over a break up, and why, in some cases, people are driven to commit extreme behaviors, such as stalking and homicide, after losing love.

Helen E. Fisher, the author of the study and a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University who studies love, says, "Romantic love is an addiction. It's a very powerfully wonderful addiction when things are going well and a perfectly horrible addiction when things are going poorly."

Helen E. Fisher also maintains that taking serotonin-enhancing antidepressants (SSRIs) can potentially dampen feelings of romantic love and attachment, as well as the sex drive.

Other studies have also linked love to specific areas in the brain. Genetics also likely play a role. One study found that the a primitive region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA) is linked the strong romantic love people feel when they first fall in love. Another study links a gene called AVPR1A to reluctance to marry.

THE MIND