Have you ever heard the saying, "Love is blind"?It is said to be from the English playwright, Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", but what does it mean?This means that you will lose your reason and will not be able to make calm decisions.
Aron et al. (2005) compared the activated regions in the brain using functional MRI by presenting photographs of lovers and acquaintances of the opposite sex in early romantic couples.
As a result, the reward system centered on the VTA*1 (ventral tegmental area) is activated when a picture of a lover is seen, but the frontal association area, which is the center of judgment, is activated. It was found that the activity of the temporal pole-parietotemporal junction, which is involved in social cognition, decreased.
These changes in the brain scientifically support the saying, "Love is blind," and show that normal judgment is dulled.
Subjects also completed the Passionate Love Scale, and the relationship between Passionate Love Scale scores and brain activation was also examined.As a result, it was clarified that the higher the degree of enthusiasm, the higher the activity of the dopamine circuit, especially the caudate nucleus, when viewing a picture of a lover.
When the secretion of dopamine increases, you fall into a pleasant state, so you want to see that lover again.However, there is more to this experiment.As a result of continuous experiments on passionate couples, it has been reported that the secretion of dopamine stops in as little as one and a half years, or as long as three years.
This is just my opinion, but it seems to me that a qualitative change in affection is necessary in order to move from love to marriage. What do you think?
I believe that the psychology of love will become clearer as the brain's conditions and changes, which are still unclear, are gradually elucidated in the field of brain physiology.
*Note 1. VTA (ventral tegmental area)
A region of the midbrain in mammals located in the ventral part of the tegmentum, adjacent to the substantia nigra and the red nucleus.Many dopaminergic neurons called the A10 cell population are present in this part, forming mesolimbic and mesolimbic projections.And the activity of these neurons is thought to be involved in reward prediction.
[References]
Aron,A., Fisher,H., Mashek,DJ, Strong,G., Li,H. & Brown,LL Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love. Journal of Neurophysiology 94(1) , 2005, 327-337
