1 00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:06,560 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff works. Hey, they 2 00:00:06,559 --> 00:00:13,200 Speaker 1: are brain stuff, luring, vogel bomb here, nicotine, chocolate, alcohol, opioids, work, gambling, sex, food, 3 00:00:13,680 --> 00:00:16,279 Speaker 1: You might as well face it. Life is basically a 4 00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:20,080 Speaker 1: gauntlet of substances and behaviors that humans can become obsessed 5 00:00:20,120 --> 00:00:24,120 Speaker 1: with and dependent on. But what about love? Not just sex, 6 00:00:24,239 --> 00:00:28,000 Speaker 1: but the deep interpersonal attachment we call love? Can it 7 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:31,840 Speaker 1: be addictive? The notion of obsessive, all consuming, and even 8 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:35,640 Speaker 1: addictive love goes back literally thousands of years. The ancient 9 00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:39,040 Speaker 1: Greek poets Sappho wrote about watching her lover marry someone else, 10 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:42,920 Speaker 1: and she describes being seized with trembling, drenched in cold sweat, 11 00:00:43,120 --> 00:00:45,879 Speaker 1: and feeling nearly dead. She might as well be describing 12 00:00:45,880 --> 00:00:48,920 Speaker 1: opium withdrawals or singing a verse of addicted to love. 13 00:00:49,680 --> 00:00:52,559 Speaker 1: Romantic love does have a lot of external features in 14 00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:55,880 Speaker 1: common with drug addiction, initial feelings of bliss and euphoria, 15 00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:00,600 Speaker 1: and obsessive fixated behavior, often leading to poor, ventually life 16 00:01:00,640 --> 00:01:04,399 Speaker 1: ruining decisions. A paper from the New York Academy of 17 00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:08,240 Speaker 1: Sciences points out that common criteria for diagnosing drug dependence 18 00:01:08,319 --> 00:01:12,920 Speaker 1: include life interference, tolerance, withdrawal, and repeated attempts to quit 19 00:01:13,640 --> 00:01:16,800 Speaker 1: sound anything like your relationship with your X. If so, 20 00:01:17,040 --> 00:01:20,600 Speaker 1: you're certainly not alone, But is there any more measurable 21 00:01:20,640 --> 00:01:23,520 Speaker 1: basis for thinking love can be considered an addiction in 22 00:01:23,560 --> 00:01:28,520 Speaker 1: the brain. Actually, yes, let's talk brain imaging. One way 23 00:01:28,520 --> 00:01:31,440 Speaker 1: that addiction hijacks the human brain is by taking advantage 24 00:01:31,440 --> 00:01:36,000 Speaker 1: of mammalian reward and motivation systems like the mesolimbic dopamine system, 25 00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:40,800 Speaker 1: which includes the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbents. 26 00:01:41,160 --> 00:01:43,080 Speaker 1: And this is part of the nervous system that gives 27 00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:46,840 Speaker 1: us internal rewards when we do something with an evolutionary benefit, 28 00:01:46,959 --> 00:01:49,840 Speaker 1: like eating or having sex. Essentially, it's how the brain 29 00:01:49,880 --> 00:01:52,720 Speaker 1: tells itself, Hey, what you just did? Do that again 30 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:56,880 Speaker 1: and again and again, whether it's eating a nutritious meal 31 00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:01,000 Speaker 1: or unfortunately, snorting cocaine. Back into thousand five, a study 32 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:03,440 Speaker 1: in the Journal of Neurophysiology used f m R I 33 00:02:03,600 --> 00:02:05,880 Speaker 1: to look at the brains of test subjects who self 34 00:02:05,920 --> 00:02:09,000 Speaker 1: reported that they were intensely in love with someone else. 35 00:02:09,480 --> 00:02:12,160 Speaker 1: When these lovebirds were shown pictures of the people they adored, 36 00:02:12,440 --> 00:02:15,640 Speaker 1: there was activation in sections of that same mammalian reward 37 00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:19,519 Speaker 1: and motivation system, for example, the right ventral tech mental area. 38 00:02:20,160 --> 00:02:22,440 Speaker 1: But that's not all. A follow up study in two 39 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:24,720 Speaker 1: looked at what happened to the brains of men and 40 00:02:24,760 --> 00:02:27,519 Speaker 1: women who had been rejected but reported that they were 41 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:31,560 Speaker 1: still deeply in love. It wasn't pretty. When heartbroken lovers 42 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:33,720 Speaker 1: were forced to look at pictures of their exes, there 43 00:02:33,760 --> 00:02:36,720 Speaker 1: was elevated activity in our old friends, the ventral tech 44 00:02:36,760 --> 00:02:40,600 Speaker 1: mental area, and the nucleus incumbents. Researchers pointed out that 45 00:02:40,600 --> 00:02:43,760 Speaker 1: the rejected lovers showed several neural correlates in common with 46 00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:47,000 Speaker 1: the brain activity of cocaine addicts craving their drug, So 47 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:49,640 Speaker 1: at the level of brain chemistry, romantic love can be 48 00:02:49,880 --> 00:02:53,239 Speaker 1: kind of like substance addiction. But there are reasons why 49 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:55,400 Speaker 1: you might not want to refer to your latest crush 50 00:02:55,480 --> 00:02:58,560 Speaker 1: as a full on addiction just yet. For example, the 51 00:02:58,639 --> 00:03:02,240 Speaker 1: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not officially 52 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:05,560 Speaker 1: recognize love addiction. And while cravings for love can be 53 00:03:05,639 --> 00:03:09,080 Speaker 1: devastating when they're unrequited or self destructive, they can also 54 00:03:09,120 --> 00:03:11,360 Speaker 1: be deeply fulfilling in a way that no drug habit 55 00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:19,519 Speaker 1: ever could be. Today's episode was written by Joe McCormick 56 00:03:19,560 --> 00:03:22,080 Speaker 1: and produced by Tristan McNeil. If you're listening to this 57 00:03:22,120 --> 00:03:24,600 Speaker 1: the day it comes out, Happy Valentine's Day. If you 58 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:27,800 Speaker 1: don't celebrate, it's also National Ferris Wheel Day in the 59 00:03:27,880 --> 00:03:30,919 Speaker 1: United States. I hope you have an excellent day regardless, 60 00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:33,320 Speaker 1: and of course, for more on this and lots of 61 00:03:33,320 --> 00:03:36,480 Speaker 1: other brainy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff works 62 00:03:36,600 --> 00:03:48,400 Speaker 1: dot com.