We tend to mistake the feelings of exitement early in a relationship with genuine love
Now let’s turn our attention to a set of emotions with which virtually everyone has some level of experience—a set of emotions that clearly parse the difference between the mesolimbic pathway (reward) and serotonergic pathway (contentment), and how conflation of the two can get you into some serious hot water. I offer you Exhibit B: love. “I love you, now let’s make love.” Two different statements, stemming from different biochemical reactions in the brain, with little in common except the word. Love is the harbinger and result of contentment (Serotonin); sex is driven by our need for reward (Dopamine). Amoeba engage in asexual reproduction. They don’t need a Limbic system. But mammals do, and they can’t do it alone. They not only need a partner, they get off on it. But this happens only under the influence of the male hormone testosterone. No testosterone, no interest. And female rats arch their backs to attention (known as lordosis) to allow for copulation whenever their flanks are stroked, but only under the influence of the female hormone estrogen. It’s the same with humans, minus the lordosis. Think about it. Why in the world would post-pubescent young adults otherwise endure the pain of possible rejection, the idle chitchat, the overpriced bar bill, the smelly pheromones, and the bad breath, if there wasn’t a really top-notch reward at the end of it? There had better be a big payout. All because of testosterone and estrogen. Before sex hormones kick in at puberty, it’s all cooties. And then it’s all angst. Again, the biochemistry always comes first.
Love has been around for all of human history, hasn’t it? Maybe not … as Tina Turner admonished us back in 1984, “What’s love but a secondhand emotion?”—suggesting that it has hardly been a primary endpoint. One of the seminal problems parsing the pathways of love is yet another etymological problem. The Inuit have fifty-six names for snow, but we have only one. Similarly, the Greeks had three words for love, which relate more closely to the biochemistry than our one word. Eros is the intense infatuation you feel for your partner at the beginning of the relationship, often tied up in sexuality, and based on testosterone, estrogen, and suspension of reality. It’s a hot mix of increased dopamine in the reward pathway, but with a reduction of serotonin in the happiness pathway.
Using new imaging techniques like PET scanning, we can now peer into the brains of people who are “in love” (infatuated). In this state, dopamine charges like a bull into the china shop of the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that’s supposed to keep you on an even keel, so they become impulsive and aggressive. At the same time, serotonin levels fall, reducing any feelings of contentment that might modulate their angst. People suffering from infatuation exhibit anxiety, stress, and obtrusive thinking—the emotions and the behaviors of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a psychiatric condition associated with low serotonin levels
References
- Lustig, H., Robert. (2017). The Hacking of the American Mind The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains Chapter 2. Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places (Location 507). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Sociology / Sociobiology / Biochemistry / Neurochemistry / Relationships Status:☀️