Love is one of the strongest feelings ever felt by a human being. Love is that emotion that ties the bond of family, friends, and a significant other. However, have you ever asked or thought about what goes through the head or in other words, what goes through the brain when one is in love, that is when he or she has feelings of love for another person? Recently, researchers have uncovered some facts about love and how it functions in our brains.
The Science of Love: Brain changes: What’s happening?
Various studies have shown that contrary to what most people believe, love is an activity that takes place in the brain. One can demonstrate with the help of an fMRI shows us what part of the brain activates when we’re in love. This helps in shaping their perception of love since it makes them comprehend the role, emotions, and behaviour it plays.
Love in terms of friendship, the love between parents and children or romantic love all provoke different parts of the brain. In matters of romantic love, some parts of the brain that are related to pleasure and reward circuits light up. This is basically why in Love, these chemicals make you happy, excited, and obsess over the loved one. Respect for parents or other relatives or friendly affection may reactivate other regions that concern the concepts of safety and cosiness.
Romantic Love: The Thrill of Connection
In other words, when a couple is in love, their heads go up into the clouds or in simple terms their brains are overactive. Expert research has found that the feeling of love stimulates certain areas of the brain that respond to rewards. This is the same system that gives us pleasure each time we go for our most preferred meal or score an important goal. Stimulating the brain also produces certain naturally occurring chemicals such as dopamine, which gives man pleasant or happy feelings. This is why being in love can all feel so thrilling and wonderful to explain why being in love could feel so thrilling and wonderful.
Notably, the areas in the brain activity that relate to romantic love are related to desire and motivation. This is why we may end up having our minds dwelling on our loved ones all the time and desiring to be with them all the time. When it comes to the brain, love triggers a reaction that is quite similar to the effects of various addictive products and that is how it feels like.
Love Between Parents and Children:
The fact is that there exists such a close bond between the two of them that they almost cannot live apart. Parents’ love for their children and romantic love are not the same but they are equally strong. Lust triggered psychotic areas of the brain involving fatherhood and nurturing associations while this manner of love activated parts of the brain connected to caring. That is why, parents have a desire to shelter and nurture children so much or at least feel so.
Oxytocin of all the neuropeptides plays a role in enhancing emotional connection and trust. This hormone helps to create a strong and very close connection with other people, not only between the mother and the child, or the father and the child but also between friends or couples.
Friendship Love: The Joy of Companionship
It is now recognized that joy forms an important component of the human condition, especially through the fellowship that comes with company.
It also triggers certain sites in our brain, but these are associated with empathy and therefore capacity to understand. In the relationships that we cherish, it is easy to want to share the experiences that they have and support them. This type of love assists in social relations as well helps in creating bonds between individuals.
Friendship love can also be manifested through the letting off of hormones in the brain which are referred to as endorphins because of the feelings that come with the releasing of same. It also helps to prove that spending time with friends is beneficial, as it contributes to the decrease in stress levels and, therefore, it is important to maintain social relationships.
Understanding Love Helps Us To Understand Ourselves
Love is one of those concepts that not only helps us to understand ourselves but one that in fact to a large extent, depends on us.
The fact that PhD researchers are learning how our brain responds to various forms of love is a step toward achieving a profound understanding of human feelings.
Ultimately, love is a phenomenon that is not easily distinguishable from emotions, feelings and other phenomena that occur within the human brain yet are responsible for creating interpersonal bonds and bringing happiness, for making a couple or any two people close to each other. When it comes to love, at least people will also be able to comprehend the science behind love and the strong feelings that determine people’s lives and improve their relationships with their loved ones.