Love: The Adolescent Brain’s Response to Romantic Experiences

“Love is a biological necessity… from a neuroscientific viewpoint, we can really say that love blossoms in the brain.” - neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo. 

Love is one of the most powerful and transformative human experiences, particularly during adolescence when the brain undergoes significant developmental changes. The intricate interplay between hormones explain how teenage brains process and respond to romantic experiences, offering insights into why adolescent love feels so intense and memorable.

Oxytocin 

Oxytocin is a hormone produced by the hypothalamus and secreted by the posterior pituitary gland. It is nicknamed the "love hormone" due to its connections to reproduction, which include social bonding, sexual behaviour, childbirth, and maternal behaviour. Oxytocin serves to control emotional states, including those that the human nervous system perceives as love, by acting on a variety of target tissues and neuroendocrine pathways.

Dopamine 

Referred to as the “reward chemical”, dopamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter made in the substantia nigra, ventral tegmental area, and hypothalamus of the brain. It acts as a chemical messenger and a hormone, activating the neurological ‘reward system’ and giving an individual a sense of pleasure. 

Developing romantic interest in another 

When an individual develops a ‘crush’ on another, the ‘butterflies’ experiences do not come from their stomach or heart. In reality, the brain is experiencing a strong spike in dopamine, contributing to feelings of pleasure. Furthermore, oxytocin, which is released when individuals are physically affectionate, and vasopressin, which causes the want to protect one's partner, flood the brain, resulting in emotions of connection.

Additional reward-driven learning about love behaviours is facilitated by the co-release of dopamine and oxytocin linked to recurrent encounters with a particular partner. A young person develops a conditioned partner response once they start dating someone they have a crush on, where the dopaminergic reward is predicted and felt most strongly with that particular bonded partner. 

Higher-order cortical brain areas linked to social cognition and self-representation, as well as dopamine-rich subcortical regions linked to emotion processing, rewards, and motivation, are all more activated during romantic love, whereas the amygdala is less activated. 

Is love an addiction?

Because romantic love exhibits traits of addiction, including the lover's intense focus on a preferred person, mood swings, cravings, obsession, compulsion, distortion of reality, emotional dependence, personality changes, risk-taking, and loss of self-control, many psychologists regard it as an addiction. 

This theory is supported by research on brain scanning using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows that strong romantic love activates parts of the brain's ‘reward system’ particularly dopamine-rich areas like the ventral tegmental area, which are also active during drug and/or behavioural addiction. Therefore, romantic love may affect the response to drug and/or behavioural addictions since it shares reward pathways with a variety of substance and behavioural addictions. In fact, strong romantic love has been found to reduce the brain activity linked to cigarette cue reactivity in a study of overnight abstinence smokers.

Romantic rejection would stimulate subcortical and cortical regions linked with drug addiction, notably the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex, as others have recognised the similarities between romantic love and addiction. Romantic rejection may also be harmful to one's health, much like many addictions, because abandonment wrath weakens the immune system, increases blood pressure, and strains the heart. The high global frequency of crimes of passion is probably also influenced by the suite of negative phenomena linked to rejection in love, such as protest, stress response, frustration, attraction, abandonment, fury, and jealousy, as well as desire and withdrawal symptoms.

Several areas of the brain's reward system were activated in conjunction with seeing the rejecter. These included the following: the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex linked to evaluating one's gains and losses, as well as craving and addiction; the ventral pallidum linked to attachment; the insular cortex and anterior cingulate linked to physical pain and the distress associated with physical pain; and the ventral tegmental area linked to feelings of intense romantic love. The desire for cocaine and other addictive substances has been linked to activity in a number of these brain areas. 

References 

Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D.J., Strong, G., Li, H. and Brown, L.L. (2005). Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love. Journal of Neurophysiology, [online] 94(1), pp.327–337. doi:https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00838.2004.

Breiter, H.C., Gollub, R.L., Weisskoff, R.M., Kennedy, D.N., Makris, N., Berke, J.D., Goodman, J.M., Kantor, H.L., Gastfriend, D.R., Riorden, J.P., Mathew, R.Thomas., Rosen, B.R. and Hyman, S.E. (1997). Acute Effects of Cocaine on Human Brain Activity and Emotion. Neuron, [online] 19(3), pp.591–611. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/s0896-6273(00)80374-8.

Carter, C.S. (2022). Oxytocin and love: Myths, metaphors and mysteries. Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology, 9, p.100107. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpnec.2021.100107.

Dozier R. W. (2002). Why We Hate: Understanding, Curbing, and Eliminating hate in Our Selves and our World. New York: Contemporary books. 

Fisher, H.E., Brown, L.L., Aron, A., Strong, G. and Mashek, D. (2010). Reward, Addiction, and Emotion Regulation Systems Associated With Rejection in Love. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(1), pp.51–60. doi:https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00784.2009.

Frascella, J., Potenza, M.N., Brown, L.L. and Childress, A.R. (2010). Shared brain vulnerabilities open the way for nonsubstance addictions: Carving addiction at a new joint? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1187(1), pp.294–315. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05420.x.

Halpern, H. (2003). How to Break Your Addiction to a Person: When--and Why--Love Doesn’t Work. [online] Bantam. Available at: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?hl=en&publication_year=1982&author=HM+Halpern&title=How+to+Break+Your+Addiction+to+a+Person..

Lombardi, L. (2022). An Expert Explains What Happens to Your Brain When You Fall in Love. [online] NewYork-Presbyterian. Available at: https://healthmatters.nyp.org/an-experts-guide-to-your-brain-in-love/.

Love, T.M. (2014). Oxytocin, Motivation and the Role of Dopamine. Pharmacology, biochemistry, and behavior, [online] 0, pp.49–60. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbb.2013.06.011.

MacDonald, F. (2015). Scientists Can Now Tell if You’re in Love by Scanning Your Brain. [online] ScienceAlert. Available at: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-can-now-tell-if-you-re-in-love-by-scanning-your-brain.

Meloy, J.R. and Fisher, H. (2005). Some Thoughts on the Neurobiology of Stalking. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 50(6), pp.1–9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1520/jfs2004508.

Orf, D. (2024). Your Brain’s Reaction to Love Varies—It All Depends on Who You Are Thinking About. [online] Popular Mechanics. Available at: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a61977934/brain-fmri-love/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2025].

Ortigue, S., Bianchi-Demicheli, F., Patel, N., Frum, C. and Lewis, J.W. (2010). Neuroimaging of Love: fMRI Meta-Analysis Evidence toward New Perspectives in Sexual Medicine. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 7(11), pp.3541–3552. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.01999.x.

Team ME ScholarHangout (2024). Serotonin, dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin are vital neurotransmitters governing our well-being -. [online] Manuscriptedit.com. Available at: https://www.manuscriptedit.com/scholar-hangout/serotonin-dopamine-endorphins-and-oxytocin-are-vital-neurotransmitters-governing-our-well-being/ [Accessed 17 Jan. 2025].

Van Anders, S.M., Goodson, J.L. and Kingsbury, M.A. (2013). Beyond ‘Oxytocin = Good’: Neural Complexities and the Flipside of Social Bonds. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42(7), pp.1115–1118. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-013-0134-9.