New Research on Brain Chemistry

(photo by Pete Korhonen)

Subjects were studied who had been "madly in love" for an average of seven months. Once inside the MRI machine, subjects were shown two photographs, one neutral, the other of their loved one. When each subject looked at his or her loved one, the parts of the brain linked to reward and pleasure, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus, lit up. What excited Fisher most was not so much finding a location, an address, for love as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, our own endogenous love potion.


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