Addicted to Love

Last month, I asked Arthur Aron, a psychologist at Stony Brook University, if you could use a brain scan to prove that you loved somebody. Not really, he said, in part because:

Most of what we’re seeing for intense, passionate love in the brain is very similar to what we see when people get other kinds of intense rewards, such as winning money or taking cocaine. So if you wanted to look like you were in love with someone, you might be able to imagine being in love with someone else, or imagine some other wonderful thing that happened to you recently or that’s about to happen. It might be possible to fake it in that sense.

Aron and his colleagues now have some newer research, involving breakups. They had a bunch of college students who said they were still "in love" look at photos of the girl or guy who just broke up with them. When they looked at these pictures (as opposed to those of somebody else they knew), there was increased activity in three parts of their brain—areas associated with motivation and reward, physical pain and distress, and craving and addiction. As the researchers write, this helps explain "why feelings and behaviors related to romantic rejection are difficult to control."

The good news? After some time has passed, an area of the brain associated with attachment begins to show less activity when people see pictures of their former loves.