WEBVTT - Is Love an Addiction? 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:02.400 Hey, please take a second and leave us a review 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:06.279 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the podcast. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:10.960 Thanks a lot. Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:14.640 of iHeartRadio Hoorheit Cham And today we're answering the question 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.760 is love and addiction? What's going on inside of our 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:21.680 brains when we think of our loved ones, our spouses, 0:00:21.720 --> 0:00:24.479 our kids, our friends. We're going to dig into the 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.680 signs of love, looking at how psychologists and neuroscientists have 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:32.000 tried to understand it and measure it, and we're going 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:35.199 to ask the question, if love is addicting, can you 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.839 manipulate it with drugs? So get ready to fall in 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:41.839 love with the signs of love as we might as 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:48.680 well face it. Are we addicted to love? Hey? Everyone, 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:52.160 Today we have a different kind of episode. It's thanksgeping 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.880 Weak and I'm spending time with my family, So I'm 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:57.400 going to play for you a chapter from the audiobook 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.360 of my latest nonfiction book, Out of Your Mind, which 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:05.679 I wrote with neuroscientist Dwayne Godwin. You know doctor Godwin. 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.720 He's been on the show several times. And in this chapter, 0:01:08.920 --> 0:01:11.840 we ask the question why do we love? And we 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:15.160 look at the evidence that says that love is basically 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:17.800 an addiction. It's one of my favorite chapters in the 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:20.600 book because it goes into the whole history of how 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:24.160 scientists have tried to get a handle on this lovely topic. 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:26.200 And hey, if you like the chapter, be sure to 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.080 check out the rest of the book. You can find 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.520 Out of Your Mind in stores everywhere. Okay, the chapter 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.360 starts with a quote from William Shakespeare, and the first 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.880 question we tackle is whether humans are the only animals 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:43.160 dad love. Here's Professor Dwayne Godwin reading from Out of Your. 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:49.200 Mind, Chapter two, Why do we love? Love looks not 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:52.680 with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:57.880 winged Cupid painted blind? William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream. 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:02.400 William Shakespeare may not have been a neuroscientist, but he 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.480 certainly knew a lot about human emotion. His plays tell 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.400 stories of human love in its many forms, Young irrational love, 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:13.880 Omeo and Juliet, the love between parents and their children, Kinglear, 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:18.720 and even the love of country Julius Caesar. To many, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:22.840 love may seem like the quintessential human emotion, but actually 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:25.960 humans are not alone in showing signs of love. In 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:29.160 the case of romantic love. About four percent of mammals 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:33.560 pair up in lifelong monogamous couples. We share that distinction 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:37.200 with prairie voles and beavers, among a few others, and 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:42.040 up to ninety five percent of birds do. The majority 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:45.080 of complex animals on the planet exhibits some form of 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.520 care and devotion to their young. Palaeontologists have even found 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:54.800 fossils of dinosaur mothers that seemingly died while protecting their 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.920 nest of eggs. At the same time, the human experience 0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:01.919 of love appears to be more vexing and complex than 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.160 mere instinct. At the very least, it seems to be 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.360 more dramatic. After all, how many beavers or birds of 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:12.959 written sonnets or entire operas detailing the impossible situations that 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:17.760 love puts us in. If you ask around, most people 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:20.200 will tell you that love is a feeling. It's what 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.079 you feel when you look at your spouse, or your child, 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.960 or your parents are the people who are close to you. 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.000 It's the urge you feel to be near them, to 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:34.080 care for them, and to make sure they're safe and happy. Unfortunately, 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.800 these days, we also use the word to describe how 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:38.960 we feel about a lot of things. We use it 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:43.440 for objects love your shoes, food, who doesn't love pie? 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:48.880 And even abstract concepts. I love democracy. Clearly, it's hyperbole 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.320 unless you actually feel the same way about shoes as 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.840 you do about your kids or your spouse. But what 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:00.240 is that feeling of love? How is it encoded in 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:03.680 the brain? Is there a trigger for falling into it? 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:06.840 Though love may seem like the stuff of literature or 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.560 sappy poems, psychologists and neuroscientists have been probing its mysteries 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.200 for over eighty years, and with modern technology they've started 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.679 to answer a few key questions about the loving brain, 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.960 including these. Is there an area in the brain devoted 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:27.880 to love? Does a love chemical exist? Do I really 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:32.120 love pie the same way I love my kids? Interestingly, 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:35.960 the answer to all of these questions, including the third one, 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:40.600 is sort of. Love is a many splendid thing. So 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:44.960 let's take a dive and fall madly into its biological complexities. 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:50.320 Trust us, you're going to love it. The love scales. 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:57.640 The history of love research starts in the nineteen forties. Psychologists, 0:04:57.839 --> 0:05:01.320 eager to prove their metal is scientists, started to tackle 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:06.520 complex human emotions with more exacting methods The problem was 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:10.039 that they didn't have the technology to peer into people's brains, 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.000 and unlike basic skills like language or movement, there were 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.279 no cases, at least at the time, of people with 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:21.560 clear brain injuries that prevented them from loving or being lovable, 0:05:22.720 --> 0:05:24.920 so they had to resort to the same method most 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.840 of us use. To figure out how anyone feels, they 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.560 had to ask. Of course, people are notoriously unreliable when 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.080 it comes to knowing their own feelings or reading the 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.279 feelings of others, so for psychologists, the first order of 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.320 business was to standardize the set of questions one would 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.159 ask to find out if someone felt love or not. 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.000 The goal is to be able to measure love in 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.560 a person so that you can then do scientific studies 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.120 with that information. For example, if you can figure out 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.200 that a group of people definitely loves their spouses and 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.520 that another group definitely doesn't, you might then look at 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:04.400 the two groups to see where that difference could be 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.880 coming from. It could be something inherent about the person 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:12.479 or something external. In psychology, the go to tools for 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:17.640 measuring complex emotions like love are called scales. Basically, they 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.960 are questionnaires that pose a series of statements and then 0:06:21.080 --> 0:06:23.680 ask you to rache your response depending on how much 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.960 you agree or disagree with those statements. For example, one 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:31.960 questionnaire might say true love lasts forever and then ask 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:34.839 you to pick a number between one and ten. One 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:39.400 equals strongly disagree, ten equals strongly agree, depending on how 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:43.440 you feel about that. Other questionnaires might have statements like 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:46.480 I would rather be with my partner than anyone else, 0:06:46.920 --> 0:06:49.640 or I would feel deep despair if I couldn't be 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:52.919 with this person, depending on whether you want to measure 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.320 a person's attitude or experience with love. In this way, 0:06:57.520 --> 0:06:59.640 a scale could get a rough measure of how you 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:03.080 feel about love, whether you experience it in your life, 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:06.320 and how often you experience it, whether you think it's 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:10.240 a positive thing, whether you feel it toward a particular person, etc. 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.679 It's not that different from one of those pop quizes 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.480 you might find in a fashion or a romance magazine, 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:21.280 with the key difference of added scientific rigor. Psychologists take 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:24.040 great care to make sure that the scales are reliable 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:27.080 so the results don't depend on the person's momentary mood 0:07:27.200 --> 0:07:31.400 or immediate circumstances, and valid so the results actually measure 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:35.320 what you're trying to measure. It's not a perfect assessment, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.320 but short of being able to read someone's mind, it's 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:41.960 the best anyone can do. Over the years, lots of 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:46.760 psychologists proposed many different love scales with names like the 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:53.160 Caring Relationship's Inventory or the Romantic Acts Questionnaire, and over 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:55.600 the years a few have risen to the top in 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:59.280 terms of their popularity or perception as being the most reliable. 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.400 Each of them has two things in common with the others. One, 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:06.760 they are based on a theory that breaks down the 0:08:06.760 --> 0:08:10.280 different kinds of love, and two, they recognize that love 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:14.720 is not just a feeling, but a combination of rational thoughts, emotions, 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:20.080 and behaviors. For example, Robert Sternberg's triangular theory of love 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:26.280 scale assumes that love is a mix of three basic ingredients, passion, closeness, 0:08:26.320 --> 0:08:29.920 and commitment. For passion, it might ask you to weigh 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:32.840 in on statements like I find this person to be 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.960 very personally attractive, while for closeness, it might pose to 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:41.640 you I share deeply personal information with this person. The 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.720 idea is to make a model that maps all of 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.640 the different kinds of love that people experience. Are you 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.439 committed to someone and feel close to them but are 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:56.120 not attracted to them, Then you are feeling companionate love 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:00.840 i e. Platonic or friend love. Do you have the 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:03.679 hots for someone but don't particularly want to be close 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:07.040 or committed to them, Then you are feeling good old 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:11.400 infatuation love. Do you feel attracted to someone and feel 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.760 close to them and want to commit long term to them, 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:21.560 Then you hit the jackpot and found consummate love. Another 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:26.600 well accepted scale, Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecker's Passionate Love 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:31.480 Scale or PLS, measures romantic love and more explicitly breaks 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:36.360 down love into rational thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. For example, 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.920 if my post statements like for me, this person is 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.320 the perfect romantic partner. To see what you think of 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.720 that person, I melt when looking deeply into their eyes, 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:51.520 to see how you feel about them, and I can't 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:54.880 stop thinking about this person. To measure how it affects 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.760 your actions, add up your scores for all thirty of 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.559 the scale statements that should tell you how much you 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.280 love that person. If it was between one hundred and 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:07.040 six and one hundred and thirty five points, you're wildly, 0:10:07.160 --> 0:10:10.600 even recklessly in love. Between eighty six and one hundred 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:14.360 and five points, passionate but less intense, sixty six to 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.360 eighty five points occasional burst of passion, forty five to 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:23.240 sixty five points, tepit infrequent passion, and fifteen to forty 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:28.800 four points the thrill is gone. Psychologists have been using 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.240 scales like this to try to get a handle on 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.240 what it means to be in love and where it 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:37.240 comes from. For example, in one study, researchers asked men 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:41.400 and women from different cultures white people in the US, Japanese, 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:45.920 and Filipinos to take the PLS Survey. The goal was 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:50.320 to test whether Eastern and Western cultures loved or thought 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.800 about bove in the same way. They found that the 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:57.720 scores of love intensity were not that different between different groups, 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:04.800 underscoring the idea that is indeed a universal feeling. Of course, 0:11:04.880 --> 0:11:07.120 these scales only give us a view of love from 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.320 the outside looking in. They don't actually tell us what's 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.200 going on inside someone's brain. But these scales prove to 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.600 be very important when the technology to do so finally 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:18.719 became available. 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.200 All right, So that is the beginning of the search 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:27.600 for love d least the beginning of the scientific search 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.240 for love. It's a feeling and you can learn a 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.360 lot about it and nap it by simply asking people. Now, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:36.920 the question is what is actually going on inside your 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.360 brain when you feel love? Is there a love part 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:42.840 of your brain? When we come back, we're going to 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.840 get into the neuroscience of love and figure out which 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.640 areas of the brain are involved and whether any of 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.400 them are related to addiction. Stay with us, we'll be 0:11:52.559 --> 0:12:06.800 right back. Welcome back. We're talking about the science of 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.680 love and whether love is an addiction. So far, we've 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:13.280 learned what love is and how the feeling of it 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:16.880 maps to different versions of the love we all experience. 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:19.600 Now we're going to ask what's happening in the brain 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:22.840 when we love. It turns out love is actually something 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.400 you can do fMRI experiments on. Here is Professor Dwaine 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.559 Godwin reading from the book we've wrote together called Out 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:31.439 of Your Mind. 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:37.959 Scanning for Love. In the nineteen nineties, a brain scanning 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:43.360 method called functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI opened a new 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:49.959 window into the brain the fMRI revolution. By the nineteen twenties, 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.160 doctors knew that different areas of the brain corresponded to 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:59.360 different functions Functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI. Let's just see 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.000 how these are used in real time. The machine works 0:13:03.000 --> 0:13:07.160 by measuring the oxygen consumed by active neurons. When neurons 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:11.040 use oxygen, it changes the magnetic properties of the hemoglobin 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:15.040 in your blood. This causes distortions and how the surrounding 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:19.520 water reacts to strong magnetic fields and pulses. By measuring 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.760 how this energy fluctuates, the machine can tell which brain 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.960 areas are using more oxygen than others. But it's not 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:29.880 fool proof, and two thousand and nine scientists scanned dead 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:34.400 salmon and got what looked like a live signal. fMRI 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:36.640 machines are able to take a picture of your whole 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.960 brain and highlight the parts that are active at any 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:44.640 given time with millimeter precision. Up to the two thousands, 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.440 fMRI scans have been used to reliably pinpoint areas that 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:52.760 were mapped by electrical probes, confirming from previous studies where 0:13:52.800 --> 0:13:56.319 the brain's areas for sensing and moving were. Now the 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.800 question was whether they could map more complicated functions, emotions, 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:04.320 and even love. Would they show that the brain has 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.880 a love area or is love too complicated to narrow 0:14:07.960 --> 0:14:11.040 down to a particular spot. It turns out that the 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.040 answer is a little of both. To find out, neuroscientists 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.880 came up with an experiment in which test subjects were 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.520 put inside an fMRI machine and shown pictures of people 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:25.000 they loved. We know they loved these people because the 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.920 subjects rated them highly on the PLS Love Scale, which 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:33.280 they filled out before the experiment. As of control, the 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:37.120 subjects were also shown photos of friends and acquaintances who 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.360 weren't rated highly on the love scale. This way, neuroscientists 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.160 could measure their brain activity when feelings of love were triggered, 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:48.440 and they could reliably assume that it was love from 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.120 the Love scale data. As you might expect from a 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.440 complex emotion, lots of areas of the brain lit up, 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:59.960 but in particular, neuroscientists saw intriguing activity in three specif 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:03.120 as that give us clues as to how our brain 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.600 processes being in love. The first area they saw light 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:10.320 up is called the insula. The insula, which means island 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:13.840 in Latin, is an interesting part of what is known 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.600 as the limbic cortex. It's an area that is folded 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.360 up deep within the side of your brain. You can't 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.160 see it from the typical surface view, and it's thought 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.880 to be where emotions and empathy are processed. When this 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.640 area is destroyed, as happens for example, with a brain 0:15:30.680 --> 0:15:34.840 disorder called fronto temporal dementia, people seem to have a 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.080 harder time controlling their emotions, and they seem to lose 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:42.200 the ability to perceive the emotions of others, otherwise known 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:46.920 as empathy. This makes sense because love is an emotion, 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:51.680 and because empathy is critical to love. Putting ourselves in 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:55.640 other people's shoes and caring for others are integral parts 0:15:55.840 --> 0:16:01.680 of what it means to love. An area where neuroscientists 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:06.320 noticed interesting activity is called the amygdala. The amygdalae are 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:09.560 a pair of nugget like bundles of neurons deep in 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.320 the middle of your brain. These nuggets have a reputation 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.200 as the center for anger and fear in your brain. 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.280 People who are missing their amygdala, if, for example, they 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:25.440 suffer from a disease called herbach wiathy, which calcifies the amygdala, 0:16:25.600 --> 0:16:28.640 can still function, but they seem to lose the ability 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.600 to feel fear. Tests show they have a hard time 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:36.080 telling whether something is dangerous or not, and they are 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:41.000 more willing to approach unfamiliar situations. The amygdala also seems 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:45.560 to be responsible for aggressive behavior in mice, taking out 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:50.479 the amygdala seems to make them less territorial. What's interesting 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.280 is that, in the case of the love experiments, activity 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:59.320 in the amygdala actually decreased when subjects looked at pictures 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:03.600 of loved ones. In other words, love suppresses your sense 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:09.800 of fear and aggression, thereby lowering your defenses. The final 0:17:09.840 --> 0:17:13.120 area that neuroscientists took note of and the Love experiments 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:15.560 is one that gives us the biggest clue about the 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.800 mechanisms for falling and staying in love. It's an area 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.919 that helps explain why humans like to love, why we 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:25.760 seek it, and why we sometimes even seem to be 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:31.800 addicted to it. That area is the brain's rewards system. 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:34.280 Okay, here's where we get to. The main question is 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.560 love and addiction, and the answer is, well, I'd love 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:40.639 to tell you, but you're gonna have to keep listening. 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.359 But hey, one of the cool things about the audiobook 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:45.840 We're Out of Your Mind is that you get both 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:48.199 of the authors reading it to you. So this is 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:50.320 the part where I take over the narration of the 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:55.840 chapter Love has its Rewards. You shouldn't be surprising that 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.760 our brains reward system lights up when we think about 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:02.080 love or when we see are loved ones. Love is 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.879 supposed to feel good. This area rewards you for it. 0:18:05.880 --> 0:18:08.159 It's a network of structures at the very center of 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:10.800 your brain that tell the rest of you when something 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.480 is good, and it motivates you to seek it out 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.639 and get more of it. That craving you have for fatty, 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.200 sugary foods like chocolate, and the ensuing pleasure you feel 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.240 when you finally indulge in them, that's the brain's reward 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:26.679 system at work. That feeling of joy when your favorite 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:29.600 sports team wins the championship, and the impulse you have 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:35.080 to buy next year's season tickets blame your reward system. 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:38.119 That sense of peace and calm that washes over you 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:40.760 when you're surrounded by your loved ones, and the sense 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.000 that there's something missing in your life if you haven't 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:45.600 seen them in a long time, well, that's also the 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:50.879 brain's reward system. What the brain scanning experiments found was 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.760 that this reward system is activated when we look at 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.399 pictures of our loved ones. Here's a little of how 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:00.240 it works. When you do or experience something else, your 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.480 brain is programmed to like a little cluster of neurons 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:07.880 called the ventral tegmental area or VTA, releases a special 0:19:07.960 --> 0:19:12.320 chemical called dopinin This chemical travels to different parts of 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.879 the brain, essentially yelling out, hey, this is good and important, 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:21.040 which triggers several actions. It inactivates the amydala, your brain 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.520 center for fear and anger, making you more open to 0:19:24.600 --> 0:19:28.840 pleasure and enjoyment. It turns on the hippocampus, your brain's 0:19:28.880 --> 0:19:32.399 memory center, to record everything about this moment so you 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.280 can remember later what led to this enjoyment. It triggers 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.520 the nucleus occumbents, your brain's motivation center, making you want 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:45.399 more of this stimulus. And finally, it triggers the prefrontal cortex, 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.280 which is where your higher thinking happens, so that you 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.800 are aware of what's going on. There are two interesting 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:55.800 things about this reward system. Number one, you can hack it. 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.760 Number two, it can be triggered to different degrees by 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:02.640 your range of things. Let's dig into each of these. 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:06.720 One it can be hacked. It turns out that it's 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.720 relatively easy to hijack your brain's reward system. For example, 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.480 in one famous experiment in the nineteen fifties, experimenters put 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.880 tiny wires into the brains of rats, placing them directly 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:21.320 on the VTA region. The wires were programmed to send 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:24.159 a little jolt of electricity whenever the rats pressed the 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:27.879 lever it was placed in their cage. This gave the 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:31.760 rats the ability to self activate their brains reward system. 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:34.119 As you might imagine, it didn't take long for the 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:37.800 rats to become obsessed with pressing the lever. They would 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.000 press it over and over to the point where they 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:44.720 would ignore basic necessities like food, water, and sex. Another 0:20:44.760 --> 0:20:48.480 way to hag their brains reward system is with drugs. Cocaine, 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:51.280 for example, is a drug derived from the coca plant 0:20:51.480 --> 0:20:55.480 that cleverly circumvents the VTA to sound the this is 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.680 good alarm in your brain. Normally, when dopamine gets released 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.800 by the it eventually gets reabsorbed back into neurons so 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:08.200 that its effects don't linger. But cocaine blocks at reabsorption, 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.760 keeping the dopamine around so that it continually activates all 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:14.440 those parts of your brain that tell you something good 0:21:14.560 --> 0:21:18.080 is happening. Number two, it can be triggered by a 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:22.920 range of things to different degrees. The second interesting thing 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:25.719 about the brain's reward system is that lots of different 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:30.560 things seem to activate it. Somehow, evolution has managed to 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.040 wire your brain so that different behaviors, from eating high 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.280 calorie foods to getting a hug from your child, trigger 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.760 this reward system. And this makes sense. In order for 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.399 you to survive and for your genes to survive to 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:45.600 the next generation, there has to be a way for 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:48.520 your brain to tell your body when you're doing something 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:51.880 good that will ensure the survival. In the case of love, 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.119 our evolution has somehow determined that being close to a 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:58.879 lifelong made and caring for your children, parents, and community 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:01.919 are good for the cuntnuation of our species. This is 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.680 why love feels good. Your brain rewarding you for behavior 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:10.200 that benefits future generations of humans. Of course, not everything 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:13.360 that triggers the reward system does, though to the same degree. 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:15.680 Most people would agree that eating a piece of cake, 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:18.600 as delicious as it may be, isn't quite the same 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.600 as finding the love of your life. That's the other 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.840 interesting thing about the reward system. Your brain is wired 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.760 so that different things activated to different extents. Eating a 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.600 tasty cookie that gives your reward system a small nudge mm, 0:22:33.040 --> 0:22:36.000 that's a tasty cookie. Your boyfriend holding back tears as 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.760 he says yes to your marriage proposal. That one lights 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:41.600 up your reward system like a fireworks display on the 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:45.000 fourth of July. You might have noticed that the same 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.480 brain circuit that's involved in feelings of love, the reward system, 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:52.320 is also the same brain circuit that's involved in drug addiction. 0:22:52.840 --> 0:22:57.360 That's because both love and drugs supercharge the reward system, 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:01.680 and neuroscientists believe that when the war system is hyperactivated, 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:05.879 it triggers a feedback loop that starts to change your brain. 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.480 We'll card this in more detail in the chapter about addiction, 0:23:09.760 --> 0:23:13.159 but the basic idea is that overwhelming amounts of dopamine 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:16.600 burn into your brain the desire to seek the source 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:19.919 of that enjoyment. This is why we crave love and 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:24.639 sometimes even obsessed about love. Love is like a drug. 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:27.760 Do you feel like you can't live without your loved ones? 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.560 As the pop singer Robert Palmer famously sang in the 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:36.200 nineteen eighties, let us bull face it. You're addicted to love. Yes, 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:38.680 it's true. I'm old enough to remember when that song 0:23:38.880 --> 0:23:41.760 came out on the radio. So one way that scientists 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:44.959 look at love is as a sort of addiction. It 0:23:45.040 --> 0:23:48.359 engages the same brain circuits, presumably to make sure that 0:23:48.440 --> 0:23:51.760 our species survives. But now the big question is what 0:23:51.960 --> 0:23:55.440 determines who we fall in love with? If love is 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:59.800 an addiction, what triggers it, Because it's probably not the case. 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:04.159 You're Madeleine love with everybody in the whole world. So 0:24:04.200 --> 0:24:06.800 when we come back, we'll answer this question, and we'll 0:24:06.800 --> 0:24:09.520 talk about whether you can take a drug that will 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:12.480 cure you of love or maybe make someone fall in 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:14.439 love with you. And then at the end, I'm going 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:17.119 to talk to doctor Godwin about how writing this chapter 0:24:17.440 --> 0:24:21.919 affected our love life, I mean, our respective love lives. 0:24:22.160 --> 0:24:25.360 We don't love working together that much. Stay with us. 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:41.960 We'll be right back, and we're back. We're talking about 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:46.000 whether love is an addiction, and the answer is yes, 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:49.879 sort of. The same brain circuit that makes you feel 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:52.240 good when you look at your partner, or your kids 0:24:52.359 --> 0:24:55.399 or your besties is basically the same circuit that is 0:24:55.520 --> 0:24:59.119 hijacked during addiction. Now, the question is how do we 0:24:59.160 --> 0:25:02.159 pick who we fall in love with? Is this something 0:25:02.160 --> 0:25:04.760 we can choose. Here's more of my reading from my 0:25:04.880 --> 0:25:10.320