Speaker 1: Hey, please take a second and leave us a review
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Hoorheit Cham And today we're answering the question
Speaker 1: is love and addiction? What's going on inside of our
Speaker 1: brains when we think of our loved ones, our spouses,
Speaker 1: our kids, our friends. We're going to dig into the
Speaker 1: signs of love, looking at how psychologists and neuroscientists have
Speaker 1: tried to understand it and measure it, and we're going
Speaker 1: to ask the question, if love is addicting, can you
Speaker 1: manipulate it with drugs? So get ready to fall in
Speaker 1: love with the signs of love as we might as
Speaker 1: well face it. Are we addicted to love? Hey? Everyone,
Speaker 1: Today we have a different kind of episode. It's thanksgeping
Speaker 1: Weak and I'm spending time with my family, So I'm
Speaker 1: going to play for you a chapter from the audiobook
Speaker 1: of my latest nonfiction book, Out of Your Mind, which
Speaker 1: I wrote with neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin. You know doctor Godwin.
Speaker 1: He's been on the show several times. And in this chapter,
Speaker 1: we ask the question why do we love? And we
Speaker 1: look at the evidence that says that love is basically
Speaker 1: an addiction. It's one of my favorite chapters in the
Speaker 1: book because it goes into the whole history of how
Speaker 1: scientists have tried to get a handle on this lovely topic.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you like the chapter, be sure to
Speaker 1: check out the rest of the book. You can find
Speaker 1: Out of Your Mind in stores everywhere. Okay, the chapter
Speaker 1: starts with a quote from William Shakespeare, and the first
Speaker 1: question we tackle is whether humans are the only animals
Speaker 1: dad love. Here's Professor Dwayne Godwin reading from Out of Your.
Speaker 2: Mind, Chapter two, Why do we love? Love looks not
Speaker 2: with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is
Speaker 2: winged Cupid painted blind? William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Speaker 2: William Shakespeare may not have been a neuroscientist, but he
Speaker 2: certainly knew a lot about human emotion. His plays tell
Speaker 2: stories of human love in its many forms, Young irrational love,
Speaker 2: Omeo and Juliet, the love between parents and their children, Kinglear,
Speaker 2: and even the love of country Julius Caesar. To many,
Speaker 2: love may seem like the quintessential human emotion, but actually
Speaker 2: humans are not alone in showing signs of love. In
Speaker 2: the case of romantic love. About four percent of mammals
Speaker 2: pair up in lifelong monogamous couples. We share that distinction
Speaker 2: with prairie voles and beavers, among a few others, and
Speaker 2: up to ninety five percent of birds do. The majority
Speaker 2: of complex animals on the planet exhibits some form of
Speaker 2: care and devotion to their young. Palaeontologists have even found
Speaker 2: fossils of dinosaur mothers that seemingly died while protecting their
Speaker 2: nest of eggs. At the same time, the human experience
Speaker 2: of love appears to be more vexing and complex than
Speaker 2: mere instinct. At the very least, it seems to be
Speaker 2: more dramatic. After all, how many beavers or birds of
Speaker 2: written sonnets or entire operas detailing the impossible situations that
Speaker 2: love puts us in. If you ask around, most people
Speaker 2: will tell you that love is a feeling. It's what
Speaker 2: you feel when you look at your spouse, or your child,
Speaker 2: or your parents are the people who are close to you.
Speaker 2: It's the urge you feel to be near them, to
Speaker 2: care for them, and to make sure they're safe and happy. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: these days, we also use the word to describe how
Speaker 2: we feel about a lot of things. We use it
Speaker 2: for objects love your shoes, food, who doesn't love pie?
Speaker 2: And even abstract concepts. I love democracy. Clearly, it's hyperbole
Speaker 2: unless you actually feel the same way about shoes as
Speaker 2: you do about your kids or your spouse. But what
Speaker 2: is that feeling of love? How is it encoded in
Speaker 2: the brain? Is there a trigger for falling into it?
Speaker 2: Though love may seem like the stuff of literature or
Speaker 2: sappy poems, psychologists and neuroscientists have been probing its mysteries
Speaker 2: for over eighty years, and with modern technology they've started
Speaker 2: to answer a few key questions about the loving brain,
Speaker 2: including these. Is there an area in the brain devoted
Speaker 2: to love? Does a love chemical exist? Do I really
Speaker 2: love pie the same way I love my kids? Interestingly,
Speaker 2: the answer to all of these questions, including the third one,
Speaker 2: is sort of. Love is a many splendid thing. So
Speaker 2: let's take a dive and fall madly into its biological complexities.
Speaker 2: Trust us, you're going to love it. The love scales.
Speaker 2: The history of love research starts in the nineteen forties. Psychologists,
Speaker 2: eager to prove their metal is scientists, started to tackle
Speaker 2: complex human emotions with more exacting methods The problem was
Speaker 2: that they didn't have the technology to peer into people's brains,
Speaker 2: and unlike basic skills like language or movement, there were
Speaker 2: no cases, at least at the time, of people with
Speaker 2: clear brain injuries that prevented them from loving or being lovable,
Speaker 2: so they had to resort to the same method most
Speaker 2: of us use. To figure out how anyone feels, they
Speaker 2: had to ask. Of course, people are notoriously unreliable when
Speaker 2: it comes to knowing their own feelings or reading the
Speaker 2: feelings of others, so for psychologists, the first order of
Speaker 2: business was to standardize the set of questions one would
Speaker 2: ask to find out if someone felt love or not.
Speaker 2: The goal is to be able to measure love in
Speaker 2: a person so that you can then do scientific studies
Speaker 2: with that information. For example, if you can figure out
Speaker 2: that a group of people definitely loves their spouses and
Speaker 2: that another group definitely doesn't, you might then look at
Speaker 2: the two groups to see where that difference could be
Speaker 2: coming from. It could be something inherent about the person
Speaker 2: or something external. In psychology, the go to tools for
Speaker 2: measuring complex emotions like love are called scales. Basically, they
Speaker 2: are questionnaires that pose a series of statements and then
Speaker 2: ask you to rache your response depending on how much
Speaker 2: you agree or disagree with those statements. For example, one
Speaker 2: questionnaire might say true love lasts forever and then ask
Speaker 2: you to pick a number between one and ten. One
Speaker 2: equals strongly disagree, ten equals strongly agree, depending on how
Speaker 2: you feel about that. Other questionnaires might have statements like
Speaker 2: I would rather be with my partner than anyone else,
Speaker 2: or I would feel deep despair if I couldn't be
Speaker 2: with this person, depending on whether you want to measure
Speaker 2: a person's attitude or experience with love. In this way,
Speaker 2: a scale could get a rough measure of how you
Speaker 2: feel about love, whether you experience it in your life,
Speaker 2: and how often you experience it, whether you think it's
Speaker 2: a positive thing, whether you feel it toward a particular person, etc.
Speaker 2: It's not that different from one of those pop quizes
Speaker 2: you might find in a fashion or a romance magazine,
Speaker 2: with the key difference of added scientific rigor. Psychologists take
Speaker 2: great care to make sure that the scales are reliable
Speaker 2: so the results don't depend on the person's momentary mood
Speaker 2: or immediate circumstances, and valid so the results actually measure
Speaker 2: what you're trying to measure. It's not a perfect assessment,
Speaker 2: but short of being able to read someone's mind, it's
Speaker 2: the best anyone can do. Over the years, lots of
Speaker 2: psychologists proposed many different love scales with names like the
Speaker 2: Caring Relationship's Inventory or the Romantic Acts Questionnaire, and over
Speaker 2: the years a few have risen to the top in
Speaker 2: terms of their popularity or perception as being the most reliable.
Speaker 2: Each of them has two things in common with the others. One,
Speaker 2: they are based on a theory that breaks down the
Speaker 2: different kinds of love, and two, they recognize that love
Speaker 2: is not just a feeling, but a combination of rational thoughts, emotions,
Speaker 2: and behaviors. For example, Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love
Speaker 2: scale assumes that love is a mix of three basic ingredients, passion, closeness,
Speaker 2: and commitment. For passion, it might ask you to weigh
Speaker 2: in on statements like I find this person to be
Speaker 2: very personally attractive, while for closeness, it might pose to
Speaker 2: you I share deeply personal information with this person. The
Speaker 2: idea is to make a model that maps all of
Speaker 2: the different kinds of love that people experience. Are you
Speaker 2: committed to someone and feel close to them but are
Speaker 2: not attracted to them, Then you are feeling companionate love
Speaker 2: i e. Platonic or friend love. Do you have the
Speaker 2: hots for someone but don't particularly want to be close
Speaker 2: or committed to them, Then you are feeling good old
Speaker 2: infatuation love. Do you feel attracted to someone and feel
Speaker 2: close to them and want to commit long term to them,
Speaker 2: Then you hit the jackpot and found consummate love. Another
Speaker 2: well accepted scale, Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecker's Passionate Love
Speaker 2: Scale or PLS, measures romantic love and more explicitly breaks
Speaker 2: down love into rational thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For example,
Speaker 2: if my post statements like for me, this person is
Speaker 2: the perfect romantic partner. To see what you think of
Speaker 2: that person, I melt when looking deeply into their eyes,
Speaker 2: to see how you feel about them, and I can't
Speaker 2: stop thinking about this person. To measure how it affects
Speaker 2: your actions, add up your scores for all thirty of
Speaker 2: the scale statements that should tell you how much you
Speaker 2: love that person. If it was between one hundred and
Speaker 2: six and one hundred and thirty five points, you're wildly,
Speaker 2: even recklessly in love. Between eighty six and one hundred
Speaker 2: and five points, passionate but less intense, sixty six to
Speaker 2: eighty five points occasional burst of passion, forty five to
Speaker 2: sixty five points, tepit infrequent passion, and fifteen to forty
Speaker 2: four points the thrill is gone. Psychologists have been using
Speaker 2: scales like this to try to get a handle on
Speaker 2: what it means to be in love and where it
Speaker 2: comes from. For example, in one study, researchers asked men
Speaker 2: and women from different cultures white people in the US, Japanese,
Speaker 2: and Filipinos to take the PLS Survey. The goal was
Speaker 2: to test whether Eastern and Western cultures loved or thought
Speaker 2: about bove in the same way. They found that the
Speaker 2: scores of love intensity were not that different between different groups,
Speaker 2: underscoring the idea that is indeed a universal feeling. Of course,
Speaker 2: these scales only give us a view of love from
Speaker 2: the outside looking in. They don't actually tell us what's
Speaker 2: going on inside someone's brain. But these scales prove to
Speaker 2: be very important when the technology to do so finally
Speaker 2: became available.
Speaker 1: All right, So that is the beginning of the search
Speaker 1: for love d least the beginning of the scientific search
Speaker 1: for love. It's a feeling and you can learn a
Speaker 1: lot about it and nap it by simply asking people. Now,
Speaker 1: the question is what is actually going on inside your
Speaker 1: brain when you feel love? Is there a love part
Speaker 1: of your brain? When we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into the neuroscience of love and figure out which
Speaker 1: areas of the brain are involved and whether any of
Speaker 1: them are related to addiction. Stay with us, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back. We're talking about the science of
Speaker 1: love and whether love is an addiction. So far, we've
Speaker 1: learned what love is and how the feeling of it
Speaker 1: maps to different versions of the love we all experience.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to ask what's happening in the brain
Speaker 1: when we love. It turns out love is actually something
Speaker 1: you can do fMRI experiments on. Here is Professor Dwaine
Speaker 1: Godwin reading from the book we've wrote together called Out
Speaker 1: of Your Mind.
Speaker 2: Scanning for Love. In the nineteen nineties, a brain scanning
Speaker 2: method called functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI opened a new
Speaker 2: window into the brain the fMRI revolution. By the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: doctors knew that different areas of the brain corresponded to
Speaker 2: different functions Functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI. Let's just see
Speaker 2: how these are used in real time. The machine works
Speaker 2: by measuring the oxygen consumed by active neurons. When neurons
Speaker 2: use oxygen, it changes the magnetic properties of the hemoglobin
Speaker 2: in your blood. This causes distortions and how the surrounding
Speaker 2: water reacts to strong magnetic fields and pulses. By measuring
Speaker 2: how this energy fluctuates, the machine can tell which brain
Speaker 2: areas are using more oxygen than others. But it's not
Speaker 2: fool proof, and two thousand and nine scientists scanned dead
Speaker 2: salmon and got what looked like a live signal. fMRI
Speaker 2: machines are able to take a picture of your whole
Speaker 2: brain and highlight the parts that are active at any
Speaker 2: given time with millimeter precision. Up to the two thousands,
Speaker 2: fMRI scans have been used to reliably pinpoint areas that
Speaker 2: were mapped by electrical probes, confirming from previous studies where
Speaker 2: the brain's areas for sensing and moving were. Now the
Speaker 2: question was whether they could map more complicated functions, emotions,
Speaker 2: and even love. Would they show that the brain has
Speaker 2: a love area or is love too complicated to narrow
Speaker 2: down to a particular spot. It turns out that the
Speaker 2: answer is a little of both. To find out, neuroscientists
Speaker 2: came up with an experiment in which test subjects were
Speaker 2: put inside an fMRI machine and shown pictures of people
Speaker 2: they loved. We know they loved these people because the
Speaker 2: subjects rated them highly on the PLS Love Scale, which
Speaker 2: they filled out before the experiment. As of control, the
Speaker 2: subjects were also shown photos of friends and acquaintances who
Speaker 2: weren't rated highly on the love scale. This way, neuroscientists
Speaker 2: could measure their brain activity when feelings of love were triggered,
Speaker 2: and they could reliably assume that it was love from
Speaker 2: the Love scale data. As you might expect from a
Speaker 2: complex emotion, lots of areas of the brain lit up,
Speaker 2: but in particular, neuroscientists saw intriguing activity in three specif
Speaker 2: as that give us clues as to how our brain
Speaker 2: processes being in love. The first area they saw light
Speaker 2: up is called the insula. The insula, which means island
Speaker 2: in Latin, is an interesting part of what is known
Speaker 2: as the limbic cortex. It's an area that is folded
Speaker 2: up deep within the side of your brain. You can't
Speaker 2: see it from the typical surface view, and it's thought
Speaker 2: to be where emotions and empathy are processed. When this
Speaker 2: area is destroyed, as happens for example, with a brain
Speaker 2: disorder called fronto temporal dementia, people seem to have a
Speaker 2: harder time controlling their emotions, and they seem to lose
Speaker 2: the ability to perceive the emotions of others, otherwise known
Speaker 2: as empathy. This makes sense because love is an emotion,
Speaker 2: and because empathy is critical to love. Putting ourselves in
Speaker 2: other people's shoes and caring for others are integral parts
Speaker 2: of what it means to love. An area where neuroscientists
Speaker 2: noticed interesting activity is called the amygdala. The amygdalae are
Speaker 2: a pair of nugget like bundles of neurons deep in
Speaker 2: the middle of your brain. These nuggets have a reputation
Speaker 2: as the center for anger and fear in your brain.
Speaker 2: People who are missing their amygdala, if, for example, they
Speaker 2: suffer from a disease called herbach wiathy, which calcifies the amygdala,
Speaker 2: can still function, but they seem to lose the ability
Speaker 2: to feel fear. Tests show they have a hard time
Speaker 2: telling whether something is dangerous or not, and they are
Speaker 2: more willing to approach unfamiliar situations. The amygdala also seems
Speaker 2: to be responsible for aggressive behavior in mice, taking out
Speaker 2: the amygdala seems to make them less territorial. What's interesting
Speaker 2: is that, in the case of the love experiments, activity
Speaker 2: in the amygdala actually decreased when subjects looked at pictures
Speaker 2: of loved ones. In other words, love suppresses your sense
Speaker 2: of fear and aggression, thereby lowering your defenses. The final
Speaker 2: area that neuroscientists took note of and the Love experiments
Speaker 2: is one that gives us the biggest clue about the
Speaker 2: mechanisms for falling and staying in love. It's an area
Speaker 2: that helps explain why humans like to love, why we
Speaker 2: seek it, and why we sometimes even seem to be
Speaker 2: addicted to it. That area is the brain's rewards system.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where we get to. The main question is
Speaker 1: love and addiction, and the answer is, well, I'd love
Speaker 1: to tell you, but you're gonna have to keep listening.
Speaker 1: But hey, one of the cool things about the audiobook
Speaker 1: We're Out of Your Mind is that you get both
Speaker 1: of the authors reading it to you. So this is
Speaker 1: the part where I take over the narration of the
Speaker 1: chapter Love has its Rewards. You shouldn't be surprising that
Speaker 1: our brains reward system lights up when we think about
Speaker 1: love or when we see are loved ones. Love is
Speaker 1: supposed to feel good. This area rewards you for it.
Speaker 1: It's a network of structures at the very center of
Speaker 1: your brain that tell the rest of you when something
Speaker 1: is good, and it motivates you to seek it out
Speaker 1: and get more of it. That craving you have for fatty,
Speaker 1: sugary foods like chocolate, and the ensuing pleasure you feel
Speaker 1: when you finally indulge in them, that's the brain's reward
Speaker 1: system at work. That feeling of joy when your favorite
Speaker 1: sports team wins the championship, and the impulse you have
Speaker 1: to buy next year's season tickets blame your reward system.
Speaker 1: That sense of peace and calm that washes over you
Speaker 1: when you're surrounded by your loved ones, and the sense
Speaker 1: that there's something missing in your life if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen them in a long time, well, that's also the
Speaker 1: brain's reward system. What the brain scanning experiments found was
Speaker 1: that this reward system is activated when we look at
Speaker 1: pictures of our loved ones. Here's a little of how
Speaker 1: it works. When you do or experience something else, your
Speaker 1: brain is programmed to like a little cluster of neurons
Speaker 1: called the ventral tegmental area or VTA, releases a special
Speaker 1: chemical called dopinin This chemical travels to different parts of
Speaker 1: the brain, essentially yelling out, hey, this is good and important,
Speaker 1: which triggers several actions. It inactivates the amydala, your brain
Speaker 1: center for fear and anger, making you more open to
Speaker 1: pleasure and enjoyment. It turns on the hippocampus, your brain's
Speaker 1: memory center, to record everything about this moment so you
Speaker 1: can remember later what led to this enjoyment. It triggers
Speaker 1: the nucleus occumbents, your brain's motivation center, making you want
Speaker 1: more of this stimulus. And finally, it triggers the prefrontal cortex,
Speaker 1: which is where your higher thinking happens, so that you
Speaker 1: are aware of what's going on. There are two interesting
Speaker 1: things about this reward system. Number one, you can hack it.
Speaker 1: Number two, it can be triggered to different degrees by
Speaker 1: your range of things. Let's dig into each of these.
Speaker 1: One it can be hacked. It turns out that it's
Speaker 1: relatively easy to hijack your brain's reward system. For example,
Speaker 1: in one famous experiment in the nineteen fifties, experimenters put
Speaker 1: tiny wires into the brains of rats, placing them directly
Speaker 1: on the VTA region. The wires were programmed to send
Speaker 1: a little jolt of electricity whenever the rats pressed the
Speaker 1: lever it was placed in their cage. This gave the
Speaker 1: rats the ability to self activate their brains reward system.
Speaker 1: As you might imagine, it didn't take long for the
Speaker 1: rats to become obsessed with pressing the lever. They would
Speaker 1: press it over and over to the point where they
Speaker 1: would ignore basic necessities like food, water, and sex. Another
Speaker 1: way to hag their brains reward system is with drugs. Cocaine,
Speaker 1: for example, is a drug derived from the coca plant
Speaker 1: that cleverly circumvents the VTA to sound the this is
Speaker 1: good alarm in your brain. Normally, when dopamine gets released
Speaker 1: by the it eventually gets reabsorbed back into neurons so
Speaker 1: that its effects don't linger. But cocaine blocks at reabsorption,
Speaker 1: keeping the dopamine around so that it continually activates all
Speaker 1: those parts of your brain that tell you something good
Speaker 1: is happening. Number two, it can be triggered by a
Speaker 1: range of things to different degrees. The second interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the brain's reward system is that lots of different
Speaker 1: things seem to activate it. Somehow, evolution has managed to
Speaker 1: wire your brain so that different behaviors, from eating high
Speaker 1: calorie foods to getting a hug from your child, trigger
Speaker 1: this reward system. And this makes sense. In order for
Speaker 1: you to survive and for your genes to survive to
Speaker 1: the next generation, there has to be a way for
Speaker 1: your brain to tell your body when you're doing something
Speaker 1: good that will ensure the survival. In the case of love,
Speaker 1: our evolution has somehow determined that being close to a
Speaker 1: lifelong made and caring for your children, parents, and community
Speaker 1: are good for the cuntnuation of our species. This is
Speaker 1: why love feels good. Your brain rewarding you for behavior
Speaker 1: that benefits future generations of humans. Of course, not everything
Speaker 1: that triggers the reward system does, though to the same degree.
Speaker 1: Most people would agree that eating a piece of cake,
Speaker 1: as delicious as it may be, isn't quite the same
Speaker 1: as finding the love of your life. That's the other
Speaker 1: interesting thing about the reward system. Your brain is wired
Speaker 1: so that different things activated to different extents. Eating a
Speaker 1: tasty cookie that gives your reward system a small nudge mm,
Speaker 1: that's a tasty cookie. Your boyfriend holding back tears as
Speaker 1: he says yes to your marriage proposal. That one lights
Speaker 1: up your reward system like a fireworks display on the
Speaker 1: fourth of July. You might have noticed that the same
Speaker 1: brain circuit that's involved in feelings of love, the reward system,
Speaker 1: is also the same brain circuit that's involved in drug addiction.
Speaker 1: That's because both love and drugs supercharge the reward system,
Speaker 1: and neuroscientists believe that when the war system is hyperactivated,
Speaker 1: it triggers a feedback loop that starts to change your brain.
Speaker 1: We'll card this in more detail in the chapter about addiction,
Speaker 1: but the basic idea is that overwhelming amounts of dopamine
Speaker 1: burn into your brain the desire to seek the source
Speaker 1: of that enjoyment. This is why we crave love and
Speaker 1: sometimes even obsessed about love. Love is like a drug.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you can't live without your loved ones?
Speaker 1: As the pop singer Robert Palmer famously sang in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, let us bull face it. You're addicted to love. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true. I'm old enough to remember when that song
Speaker 1: came out on the radio. So one way that scientists
Speaker 1: look at love is as a sort of addiction. It
Speaker 1: engages the same brain circuits, presumably to make sure that
Speaker 1: our species survives. But now the big question is what
Speaker 1: determines who we fall in love with? If love is
Speaker 1: an addiction, what triggers it, Because it's probably not the case.
Speaker 1: You're Madeleine love with everybody in the whole world. So
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll answer this question, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about whether you can take a drug that will
Speaker 1: cure you of love or maybe make someone fall in
Speaker 1: love with you. And then at the end, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk to doctor Godwin about how writing this chapter
Speaker 1: affected our love life, I mean, our respective love lives.
Speaker 1: We don't love working together that much. Stay with us.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back, and we're back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: whether love is an addiction, and the answer is yes,
Speaker 1: sort of. The same brain circuit that makes you feel
Speaker 1: good when you look at your partner, or your kids
Speaker 1: or your besties is basically the same circuit that is
Speaker 1: hijacked during addiction. Now, the question is how do we
Speaker 1: pick who we fall in love with? Is this something
Speaker 1: we can choose. Here's more of my reading from my
Speaker 1: latest nonfiction book, Out of Your Mind, The Bonds of Love.
Speaker 1: One question we haven't answered yet is why do we
Speaker 1: love the people that we do. We know that love
Speaker 1: is a feeling, that this feeling is triggered by your
Speaker 1: brain's reward system, and we know that your brain is
Speaker 1: wired to activate this reward system under certain conditions. But
Speaker 1: what is it about certain people that makes this love them.
Speaker 1: The answer to this question is still largely a mystery
Speaker 1: to neuroscientists. One way to look at it is that
Speaker 1: your reward system gets input from lots of places in
Speaker 1: your brain. Everything from your senses, your memories, your base instincts,
Speaker 1: and your higher thinking areas all feed into this reward system,
Speaker 1: chiming in with an opinion about what they think is
Speaker 1: good for you. And it could be that certain people
Speaker 1: just check all the boxes. Throughout your life, your brain
Speaker 1: has grown and been shaped by your genes and by
Speaker 1: your life experiences. You've developed opinions and likes, and subconscious
Speaker 1: preferences and emotional triggers. All of this has set you
Speaker 1: up so that when you meet certain people, they cause
Speaker 1: multiple areas in your brain to pin your reward system
Speaker 1: at once, sending it the clear signal that somehow this
Speaker 1: is someone that you want to be close to. Of course,
Speaker 1: those of you with kids might be wondering, well, I
Speaker 1: didn't exactly get to choose my kid, and yet I
Speaker 1: still love them with all my heart. And for that
Speaker 1: we have another chemical to thank, oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone,
Speaker 1: which means it doesn't just float around your brain. It
Speaker 1: also goes into your blood stream and travels to the
Speaker 1: rest of your body. In particular, it seems to be
Speaker 1: important in establishing the bond between a parent and child.
Speaker 1: Oxotocin is released after warm, positive interactions, especially those ending
Speaker 1: in hugs. For women, oxytocin levels increase as much as
Speaker 1: four times their normal levels. During labor, the active breastfeeding
Speaker 1: also releases oxotocin. What does oxytocin do For one, it
Speaker 1: lowers the level of stress hormones in your body. It
Speaker 1: also turns down the amygdala, which, as we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: is the area that makes you fearful of new situations
Speaker 1: or other people. By suppressing your fear center, oxytocin essentially
Speaker 1: lets your guard down and makes you more open to love.
Speaker 1: Oxytocin also activates what it might be called the mommy
Speaker 1: or daddy area of the brain. This area, called the
Speaker 1: medial pre optic area or MPOA, is a part of
Speaker 1: the brain that controls automatic functions like body temperature, hunger,
Speaker 1: and sleep. We know it's important for parenting behaviors because
Speaker 1: when it's turned off, either by drugs or by damage
Speaker 1: to the brain, these behaviors are interrupted. In experiments, might
Speaker 1: spit out the full use of the MPOA, stop nursing
Speaker 1: their young, and in some cases, even abandon their babies.
Speaker 1: Disturbances in this area in men or women they explain
Speaker 1: why a small percentage of human parents have a hard
Speaker 1: time bonding with their children, or why some don't seem
Speaker 1: to bond at all. Lastly, oxotosin does what you might
Speaker 1: expect to help parents bond with their children. It activates
Speaker 1: the brain's reward system. It turns out that the regions
Speaker 1: of the brains that are part of the reward system
Speaker 1: are also sensitive to oxytocin, so when this hormone gets released,
Speaker 1: it also causes the release of dopamine. And what about
Speaker 1: people who don't report falling head over heels for their partner,
Speaker 1: but grew to love them over time. It turns out
Speaker 1: that oxytocin also plays a role in helping love blossom.
Speaker 1: We know this from studying a cute little animal called
Speaker 1: the prairie role. The prairie role is one of the
Speaker 1: four percent of mammals dead. Like many humans, pair up
Speaker 1: in couples for life to raise their young. Scientists have
Speaker 1: done experiments where the brains of female prairie roles were
Speaker 1: injected with oxytocin. Those that receive the injection were found
Speaker 1: to huddle more with their partners and seem to form
Speaker 1: stronger bonds. In other experiments, scientists blocked oxytocin and found
Speaker 1: that it disrupted how often the wolves formed couples. In humans,
Speaker 1: as in prairie voles, oxytocin is released by your brain
Speaker 1: during sex. It's your body's way of encouraging you to
Speaker 1: form a lasting bond with that person. More interestingly, it
Speaker 1: points to the idea that who we fall in love
Speaker 1: with can be manipulated. For example, increasing the amount of
Speaker 1: oxytocin in your system might lower your guard and make
Speaker 1: you more likely to fall in love with the person
Speaker 1: you're with. Love potion anyone. Alternately, you might be able
Speaker 1: to sour a relationship by somehow disrupting the oxytocin in
Speaker 1: a couple's brains. In fact, recent evidence suggests a species
Speaker 1: of animal very close to us may have taken advantage
Speaker 1: of our oxytocin system to hack their way into our hearts.
Speaker 1: Does your dog really love you?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 1: Over fourteen thousand years ago, some of the first dogs
Speaker 1: were domesticated. This probably happened when bold and less aggressive
Speaker 1: wolves encountered human camps. These early dog like wolves may
Speaker 1: have been more interested in easy snacks and human left
Speaker 1: doors than informing emotional bonds with humans. Since then, the
Speaker 1: traits of many modern dogs had been selected by breeding
Speaker 1: to be perfect pets, docile, attentive, and affectionate. But do
Speaker 1: they really love us? Researcher Takefumi ki Kosui noticed that
Speaker 1: his poodle tear it up when she nurished her puppies
Speaker 1: in a way that indicated a positive emotion. His team
Speaker 1: wondered whether other positive events, like interacting or seeing their
Speaker 1: owner might produce a similar result. In one set of experiments,
Speaker 1: they separated dogs from their owners. After a few hours,
Speaker 1: some of the dogs were reunited with their owners, while
Speaker 1: others were brought to someone who was familiar to them
Speaker 1: but who was not their owner. They found that the
Speaker 1: dogs that reunited with their owners had more tears in
Speaker 1: their eyes than the dogs that didn't reunite with their owners.
Speaker 1: Were these tears of joy that the researchers found it
Speaker 1: prooves that dogs really love us, Oh not so fast.
Speaker 1: In another set of experiments, the team measured how long
Speaker 1: dogs staring at their owners and how that affected the
Speaker 1: owner's oxytocin levels. They found that dogs that gaze at
Speaker 1: their owners longer produce the bigger rise in their owners
Speaker 1: oxytocin levels, and they found that owners would higher oxytocin
Speaker 1: levels were more likely to play with and pet their dogs.
Speaker 1: It could be love, or it could be that dogs
Speaker 1: learned to produce tears to take advantage of our weakness
Speaker 1: for puppy eyes. But whether some dogs really do form
Speaker 1: a bond with us or we're just bred to make
Speaker 1: us feel that way begs the question do we really care?
Speaker 1: We're still learning a lot about oxytocin. For example, one
Speaker 1: recent study suggests that it may also be involved in
Speaker 1: regulating how much we eat, how we process emotions, and
Speaker 1: when our instinct to flea gets activated. Like all hormones,
Speaker 1: oxytocin acts in a mess and imprecise way, affecting lots
Speaker 1: of systems at the same time. Who doesn't love a
Speaker 1: good ending to recap. While writers and poets have been
Speaker 1: trying to understand love for hundreds or thousands of years,
Speaker 1: psychologists and neuroscientists have made great progress in just the
Speaker 1: last few decades. Studies about the scale of love have
Speaker 1: taught us that love is universal and that to some
Speaker 1: degree it can be measured. fMRI brain imaging experiments tell
Speaker 1: us that there are many different brain areas involved in love,
Speaker 1: but the overall picture that emerges is a relatively simple one.
Speaker 1: Love feels good. Therefore, you want more of it. If
Speaker 1: something feels good, especially if it's as powerful as the
Speaker 1: feelings we have towards the people that are close to us,
Speaker 1: your brain wants to repeat it. The reagions that form
Speaker 1: your brain's reward system. Make sure that you are aware
Speaker 1: of this, that you remember it, and it changes your
Speaker 1: brain to want it in your life as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Breaking it down like this may make love seem clinical
Speaker 1: or just about pleasure, but the magic of love is
Speaker 1: in the subtleties the mystery still remains, why do we
Speaker 1: love certain people and not others. Nobody knows what's going
Speaker 1: to make one person stand out among others for that
Speaker 1: initial attraction, and love takes time and patience. It may
Speaker 1: be helped along by brain chemicals and hormones, but it
Speaker 1: requires care for bonds to form and endure, It needs
Speaker 1: effort to grow, and that is something that neuroscience can't predict,
Speaker 1: at least not yet. Maybe in the future, neuroscientists will
Speaker 1: be able to scan your brain and predict who you
Speaker 1: will fall in love with, or they may be able
Speaker 1: to design drugs that can reinforce love in your relationships
Speaker 1: or make you forget relationships that didn't work out. It's
Speaker 1: been a love filled ride, and there's still a lot
Speaker 1: we don't know about love in the brain. As Shakespeare
Speaker 1: wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the course of true
Speaker 1: love never did run smooth. Maybe Shake Spear was a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist after all. Well, it was lovely of you to
Speaker 1: join us. Hey, if you're interested in checking out the
Speaker 1: rest of the book, look for Out of your Mind
Speaker 1: wherever books or audiobooks are sold. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: We'd love to see you again. Next week. You've been
Speaker 1: listening to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced
Speaker 1: by me or Hey Cham, edited by Rose Seguda, executive
Speaker 1: producer Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Jasey Peckram.
Speaker 1: And you can follow me on social media. Just search
Speaker 1: for PhD Comics and the name of your favorite platform.
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribe to Sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
Speaker 1: tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I would love it if people checked
Speaker 1: out the rest of the book, how about you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope people enjoy it. And I really feel
Speaker 2: that it's important to tell the people that you love
Speaker 2: about the thing that you love. And I feel like
Speaker 2: in writing this book it provided me a way to
Speaker 2: reach out to my family and to friends and bring
Speaker 2: them into my world just a little bit amazing.
Speaker 1: It's an expression of your love for what.
Speaker 2: Of the brain. And I have a special love for
Speaker 2: the brain because it is the essence of what we do.
Speaker 2: It is the place where we go to understand everything.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for sharing your love of the brain
Speaker 1: with us. Brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you have a love too. You love conveying
Speaker 2: science in a way that is understandable to people, that
Speaker 2: brings them to a better understanding of the world that
Speaker 2: we live in, whether it's your books and physics or
Speaker 2: the book that you did with me, and also just
Speaker 2: the books that you've written that bring young people into
Speaker 2: a better understanding and to find their love in science.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably true of you as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you for saying that, Quene. I love that,
Speaker 1: I love you and I love you man. Awesome. All right,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. I