Love Caused Chemical Changes in the Brain

When somebody to fall in love or see our relatives who are in love, it seems there are changes that we can feel. It seems difficult to find something rational because no less a person who is in the lovelorn looks a little "crazy". Apparently, fall in love caused chemical changes in the brain.

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist professor at Rutgers University along with two her colleagues, using MRI machines to study the brains of people who said that he was in 'heavy' love. When the research subjects look at pictures of her lover, the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus caudal will "light up". Caudal nucleus is an area of ​​dense network of receptors for the neurotransmitters dopamine.

Donatella Marazziti, a psychiatry professor at the University of Pisa in Italy is also doing research. She measured the levels of serotonin in the serotonin neurotransmitters in the blood of people who are in love for a few months and his mind filled with his lover for a few hours each day.

In that study, Marazziti found that serotonin levels in people who are at equally low lovelorn with serotonin levels in people suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder or some sort of obsessed with something in excess (coercive).

A group of scientists from China and New York used brain scans from 100 people to map out the brain in love -- and the brain falling out of love.

"LG" indicates the brain of a person in love, "SG" indicates the brain of single person, and "ELG" indicates the brain of a person who recently fell out of love. The color red highlights areas with high levels of brain activity. (Picture from: http://huff.to/1kcWUXx)

The findings, which were published online in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience last month, revealed that people who were deeply in love and those who had recently broken up with their partner showed differences in a number of brain regions, particularly some that make up the brain's so-called "reward center" and are involved in emotion regulation and feelings of motivation and pleasure.

Here's how falling in (and out) of love affects brain activity.

Falling in love: When a person is in love, there tends to be increased activity in the brain's "reward center," likely because they are experiencing a great deal of pleasure. One area of increased activity was a part of the brain that is active when someone first detects something rewarding (in this case, a love interest) or is expecting a reward (for instance, a special night out with said love interest).

The brain activity of people in love suggests that "they feel more rewarded, are more emotional and attentive, show higher motivation and are more engaged in social interaction," Anna Zilverstand, a post-doctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a co-author of the study, told The Huffington Post.

Breaking up: After a breakup, activity in the brain's reward center decreases, indicating a drop in pleasure. A particularly sharp decrease in activity and functional connectivity was observed in a part of the reward center associated with the expectation of rewards.

So, if being lovesick and we feel like "insane", there is a scientific explanation, because falling in love is indeed caused chemical changes in the brain. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | HUFFINGTON POST | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INDONESIA]

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