Although reams of sentimental poetry, plays and love songs disagree, scientists are keen to stress that love is felt not in the heart, but in the brain.
Thanks to a new study from researchers at Aalto University in Finland, romantically inclined scientists can be even more precise.
From the romantic love you feel for your partner to the love you feel for your dog, incredible maps reveal which brain areas are activated by different types of love.
Although romantic love is felt primarily in the social areas of the brain, parents’ love for their children elicits the most powerful response.
Dr. Pärttyli Rinne, philosopher and researcher who led the study, says: ‘In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain’s reward system, in the striatum area, when imagining love, and this was not seen in any other form of love.’
Researchers have mapped the brain’s activation while experiencing love, revealing exactly where different types of love are felt. Pictured: The brain regions most often associated with interpersonal love
To find out exactly where in the brain love is felt, the researchers recruited 55 parents who described themselves as parents living in a loving relationship.
While lying in an fMRI scanner, participants were read a series of short stories, each describing a different type of love.
For example, to evoke a sense of parental love, participants were read the following: ‘You see your newborn child for the first time. The baby is soft, healthy and sturdy — the greatest miracle of your life. You feel love for the little one.’
To provide a baseline measure for comparison, participants were also presented with some exceptionally boring neutral scenarios, such as looking out of a bus window.
55 participants were placed in an fMRI scanner while being read stories describing different types of love. The picture shows the brain experiencing romantic love
Researchers found that most interpersonal forms of love activate the same areas to varying degrees, but the most intense of all was parental love
Parental love activates areas deep in the brain’s reward system, something no other type of love does (file image)
Participants then had to sit for 10 seconds and imagine themselves in the situation while the researchers carefully recorded their brain states.
By combining the results from the different participants, the researchers were able to create a map of six different types of love.
Dr. Rinne has previously mapped where in the body different types of love are felt, but this provides a first insight into the neurological processes behind the experience.
It was found that most forms of love involving humans activate corresponding parts of the social brain regions.
Dr. Rinne says, “The activation pattern of love is generated in social situations in the basal ganglia, the midline of the forehead, the precuneus, and the temporoparietal junction on the sides of the back of the head.”
The main difference between the types of love was the intensity of brain activity they elicited.
Romantic love, and other interpersonal forms of love, are most often felt in the basal ganglia, the midline of the forehead, and the back and sides of the head. Pictured: Crazy Stupid Love
The better we know someone, the greater the activation in the brain areas associated with social activity. Pictured: the brain activation associated with love for a friend
Compared to the love of a friend, the love we feel for strangers (pictured) produces relatively little brain activity
For example, compare the brain map that corresponds to the love you feel for a stranger with the map that corresponds to the love you feel for a friend.
The closer someone is to us, the more intensely the social brain areas are activated in response to that feeling of love.
The most powerful activation was the love a parent felt for their child, followed by romance.
However, the pattern of brain activity was influenced not only by the proximity of the object of our love, but also by the type of object.
Love for pets and love for nature produce clearly different activation patterns than love for other people.
For example, the love of nature activates the reward centers associated with visual processing and spatial insight.
The type of brain activation observed also varied depending on the type of thing loved. The love of pets (pictured) produces very different patterns of activation than that of another person.
Love of nature activates brain areas related to spatial awareness and visual processing (see image)
The only exception was found among participants who were also pet owners.
The researchers found that living with a furry friend caused such profound changes in your thought processes that they could recognize the pet owners by their brain activity.
Participants were read a sentence such as: ‘You are lying on the couch at home and your cat comes to you. The cat curls up next to you and purrs sleepily. You love your pet.’
For pet owners, if not anyone else, hearing this story also activates the social brain areas normally associated with love for people.
The researchers previously mapped where in the body different types of love were felt by asking participants where they felt the experience most
The researchers found that participants who owned pets experienced brain activity in social brain regions when they imagined a scenario involving their pets.
This supports the growing evidence that people’s love for their pets transcends species boundaries.
Recent research has shown that when people look into their pets’ eyes, the oxytocin pathway is activated, similar to the bond between mother and child.
Dr. Rinne says, “When you look at love for pets and the brain activity that goes along with that, brain areas associated with social behavior show statistically whether or not the person is a pet owner.
‘These areas are more active in pet owners than in people without pets.