WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: Can You Be Addicted to Love?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.360
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi

0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:08.880
<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a

0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:12.680
<v Speaker 1>classic brain Stuff episode. This is actually a script that

0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:15.440
<v Speaker 1>we wrote back when we were doing brain Stuff videos,

0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:17.960
<v Speaker 1>so I tried to adapt it to work without visuals.

0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:21.079
<v Speaker 1>In this one, we get into the sticky science of

0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:26.200
<v Speaker 1>whether being in love can actually be an addiction. Hey,

0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:33.000
<v Speaker 1>they're brain Stuff Lauring vogel Bomb. Here, nicotine, chocolate, alcohol, opioids, work, gambling, sex, food,

0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.080
<v Speaker 1>You might as well face it. Life is basically a

0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:39.879
<v Speaker 1>gauntlet of substances and behaviors that humans can become obsessed

0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:43.920
<v Speaker 1>with and dependent on. But what about love? Not just sex,

0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.839
<v Speaker 1>but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it

0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.640
<v Speaker 1>be addictive? The notion of obsessive, all consuming, and even

0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:55.440
<v Speaker 1>addictive love goes back literally thousands of years. The ancient

0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.840
<v Speaker 1>Greek poets Sappho wrote about watching her lover marry someone else,

0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.720
<v Speaker 1>and she describes being seized with trembling, drenched in cold sweat,

0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:05.680
<v Speaker 1>and feeling nearly dead. She might as well be describing

0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.680
<v Speaker 1>opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love.

0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.360
<v Speaker 1>Romantic love does have a lot of external features. In

0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.679
<v Speaker 1>common with drug addiction, initial feelings of bliss and euphoria

0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:20.360
<v Speaker 1>and obsessive fixated behavior, often leading to poor, potentially life

0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.680
<v Speaker 1>ruining decisions. A twenty ten paper from the New York

0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.240
<v Speaker 1>Academy of Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing

0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:32.360
<v Speaker 1>drug dependence include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts

0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:35.680
<v Speaker 1>to quit. Sound anything like your relationship with your X.

0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.520
<v Speaker 1>If so, you're certainly not alone, but is there any

0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:42.680
<v Speaker 1>more measurable basis for thinking love can be considered an

0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:47.280
<v Speaker 1>addiction in the brain. Actually, yes, let's talk brain imaging.

0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:50.440
<v Speaker 1>One way that addiction hijacks the human brain is by

0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:54.080
<v Speaker 1>taking advantage of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the

0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:59.120
<v Speaker 1>mesolimbic dopamine system, which includes the ventral tegmental area and

0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:02.440
<v Speaker 1>the nucleus incumbents. This is part of the nervous system

0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.320
<v Speaker 1>that gives us internal rewards when we do something with

0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:09.160
<v Speaker 1>an evolutionary benefit, like eating or having sex. Essentially, it's

0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.639
<v Speaker 1>how the brain tells itself, Hey, what you just did?

0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.799
<v Speaker 1>Do that again and again and again, whether it's eating

0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.839
<v Speaker 1>a nutritious meal or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back in two

0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.320
<v Speaker 1>thousand and five, a study in the Journal of Neurophysiology

0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:24.200
<v Speaker 1>used f m r I to look at the brains

0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.200
<v Speaker 1>of test subjects who self reported that they were intensely

0:02:27.360 --> 0:02:30.560
<v Speaker 1>in love with someone else. When these lovebirds were shown

0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.400
<v Speaker 1>pictures of the people they adored, there was activation in

0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.440
<v Speaker 1>sections of that same mammalian reward and motivation system, for example,

0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.679
<v Speaker 1>the right ventral tech mental area. But that's not all.

0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:43.600
<v Speaker 1>A follow up study in two looked at what happened

0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:45.280
<v Speaker 1>to the brains of men and women who had been

0:02:45.320 --> 0:02:48.440
<v Speaker 1>rejected but reported that they were still deeply in love.

0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.079
<v Speaker 1>It wasn't pretty. When heartbroken lovers were forced to look

0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:54.840
<v Speaker 1>at pictures of their exes, there was elevated activity in

0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:57.679
<v Speaker 1>our old friends, the ventral tech mental area, and the

0:02:57.760 --> 0:03:01.320
<v Speaker 1>nucleus incumbents. Researchers point it out that the rejected lovers

0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.359
<v Speaker 1>showed several neural correlates in common with the brain activity

0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.320
<v Speaker 1>of cocaine addicts craving their drug, So at the level

0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.160
<v Speaker 1>of brain chemistry, romantic love can be kind of like

0:03:10.280 --> 0:03:13.560
<v Speaker 1>substance addiction. But there are reasons why you might not

0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:15.799
<v Speaker 1>want to refer to your latest crush as a full

0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.760
<v Speaker 1>on addiction. Just yet. For example, the Diagnostic and Statistical

0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.280
<v Speaker 1>Manual of Mental Disorders does not officially recognize love addiction,

0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:26.320
<v Speaker 1>and while cravings for love can be devastating when they're

0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.800
<v Speaker 1>unrequited or self destructive, they can also be deeply fulfilling

0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:31.800
<v Speaker 1>in a way that no drug habit ever could be.

0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:41.280
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Joe McCormick and produced by

0:03:41.280 --> 0:03:44.400
<v Speaker 1>Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on this and

0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.920
<v Speaker 1>lots of other topics about brain Stuff, visit howstworks dot com.

0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.080
<v Speaker 1>Brain Stuff is a production of I heart Radio. For

0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:54.080
<v Speaker 1>more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,

0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:56.880
<v Speaker 1>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.