( our subjects showed activity in reward...)Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive

"As it turns out, romantic love is probably best characterized as a motivation or goal-oriented state that leads to various specific emotions, such as euphoria or anxiety," Aron noted. "With this view, it becomes clearer why the lover expresses such an imperative to pursue his or her beloved and protect the relationship."

Sexual arousal 'very different'; confirmation of questionnaire methods

Aron added: "Our participants who measured very high on a self report questionnaire of romantic love also showed strong activity in a particular brain region ?results that dramatically increase our confidence that self-report questionnaires can actually measure brain activity."

Aron also noted that the research answered the "historic question of whether love and sex are the same, or different, or whether romantic passion is just warmed over sexual arousal." He said, "Our findings show that the brain areas activated when someone looks at a photo of their beloved only partially overlap with the brain regions associated with sexual arousal. Sex and romantic love involve quite different brain systems."

fMRI confirms major predictions, yields "remarkable implications"; autism link

Aron reported that, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other measurements, he and his colleagues found support for their two major predictions: (1) early stage, intense romantic love is associated with subcortical reward regions rich with dopamine; and (2) romantic love engages brain systems associated with motivation to acquire a reward.

Brown explains some of these findings, commenting that "when our participants looked at a photo of his/her beloved, specific activation occurred in the rig
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Source:The American Physiological Society