Feb 04, 2023 12:00:00

What effect does 'love' have on the brain?

Many people have an image that 'love' is the most important function of the mind, but in reality, the feeling of love causes various changes in the brain. Scientific media Live Science explains the physical effects of love on the human brain.

What does love do to your brain?

https://www.livescience.com/what-does-love-do-to-your-brain

Gül Dölen , associate professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that feeling love involves the release of important neurotransmitters from specific areas of the brain. 'The first thing we need to clarify is 'What does love mean?'' he said, explaining that there are many different types of love. increase.

For example, if there is romantic love for someone with whom you have romantic feelings, there is also love that means kinship, and friendship between friends is sometimes expressed as love. When humans remember these emotions, a hormone called oxytocin is released, but the part of the neuron that produces oxytocin differs depending on the type of love they feel.

According to Dölen, the oxytocin released during romantic love is produced in magnocellular cells in the hypothalamus , while other forms of love release oxytocin in smaller parvocellular cells. It is said to be produced in (small cell neurons). Dölen also said that the amount of oxytocin released when you feel romantic love is higher than the amount of oxytocin released in response to other types of love.

Also, romantic love and other love have different effects of oxytocin. Oxytocin released from magnocellular neurons enters the bloodstream and

cerebrospinal fluid , reaches the brain and the entire body, binds to and activates cells such as the adrenal gland , uterus, breast, and brain that have oxytocin receptors. ``Big love floods the whole brain and everything becomes rosy,'' Dölen said, saying that the reaction of the receptor can provide stress suppression and euphoria. On the other hand, the amount of oxytocin released from small cell neurons is small and is delivered only to specific synapses in the brain. Therefore, it seems that the whole brain will not be soaked or enter the bloodstream.

The effects of love on the human brain is an interesting topic of research, but brain scans such as fMRI only measure how much blood is flowing to specific areas of the brain, and the hypothalamic magnocellular neurons and small cell neurons separately. Therefore, it should be noted that much of the research on love and brain responses has focused on mice that have been genetically engineered to make activated neurons glow.

On the other hand, a research team led by Associate Professor Sandra Langeslag at the University of Missouri -St. I have found that more oxygen is supplied to the buttocks. From this, Mr. Langeslag said, 'I concluded that people pay more attention to their loved ones than to beautiful strangers and friends.'