Let's Talk About Sex: The Science Of Love (VIDEO)

Hey everyone, It's Cara Santa Maria. Love is arguably one of the greatest enigmas of all human nature. It is the very definition of ineffable. And although it is nearly impossible to define, those of us who have known love understand the painful bliss that the poet Keats felt in his dying letter to his fiance: "I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again. My life seems to stop there. I see no further. You have absorb'd me."

Although it is hard to qualify what love really is, it hasn't stopped scientists from attempting to quantify it. Researchers have peered into the brains of people who report being in love. What they have found is that in the early stages of a relationship, people show increased activity in the ventral tegmental area, the dopamine factory that makes us crave things like sex and chocolate. Eventually this initial attraction and lust fades into attachment, which occurs in the nucleus accumbens and the caudate nuceli. These brain regions add serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin to the mix, along with a strong sense of permanence.

Serotonin is the neurotransmitter that is altered by the largest class antidepressant drugs, the SSRIs. It is also the chemical responsible for the ecstasy that people experience when they take the drug methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or, well, ecstasy. Oxytocin and vasopressin are the neurochemicals responsible for the strong bonding that exists between mother and child. They are known to increase trust and decrease anxiety, two ingredients necessary for true love. And although the emotions we feel during sex can be fleeting, most researchers agree that love is more than passion. It's bonding. It's commitment.

Neuroscientists have shown that in some ways, love is similar to addiction. A painful breakup mimics the symptoms of withdrawal. It hurts so badly to lose our one and only. We don't want them back, we need them back, and only time can temper the heartache.

Attraction, sex, love...these things are so difficult to intellectualize. And while even the most fleeting connections can cause us to utterly lose ourselves, I disagree with the premise that the more we know, the less we feel. The ignorant eye sees magic where there is reason. While the inquisitive, scientific eye wants to know why its experiences are so awe-inspiring. Of course we may never know the true nature of human sexuality and love, but to know ourselves sexually is to know ourselves intimately, to know how we relate to one another, and to know our place in the grand evolutionary story. Without sex or love, we wouldn't be here, and neither would our children. And for them, there is so much yet to learn.

Let's learn together. Hit me up on Twitter, Facebook, or leave your comments on my blog. Come on, Talk Nerdy to Me!

Sources:
Sexual Interactions
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Societies of Brains: A Study in the Neuroscience of Love and Hate
Nature
Archives of Sexual Behavior
Journal of Neurophysiology
BBC
Psychology Today

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Comments

[ladycrisperfst]

07:42 PM on 11/28/2011

Boy, did you pick the wrong one to send this alert to. I would like to be in love and be able to speak on it. However, right now I have must more important things to get done. If it comes my way fine. If not then that's fine too. I will say this though. If you have found the real thing hold onto it as lightly as you can. So when it no longer cares to be held, you can let it go. Peace.

[Mindy Czech]

10:28 AM on 11/28/2011

I've heard that before, how being in love is pretty much getting high on the chemicals in your body. It can sound cold and clinical, but I actually kind of like viewing it that way. You aren't going to get that reaction with every person you date, or every person you sleep with. It will only be with someone you are truly in love with. (At least, that's how it was in my case.) The feelings my wife and I share are feelings we have never shared with anyone before. We literally cannot get enough of each other. I'm not ashamed to admit that I am addicted to Cindy, and we've even joked that we get withdrawal when we don't see each other all day. Even a couple years later, we're still in the honeymoon stage and I don't see that ending any time soon, if ever.

[pavementends42]

11:53 AM on 11/28/2011

I like this post: the two, love and science, don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's one of the things I don't get about the rabidly anti-science Creationists, who for some reason don't see the marvel of life as it is portrayed with greater and greater understanding through science. I think the more we learn, the less, we realize, we know! And THAT is pretty effing amazing!

[Mindy Czech]

06:45 PM on 11/29/2011

It seems like, if it wasn't for the science, love wouldn't exist. You're constantly getting high off of the chemicals in your brain, and those chemicals are what make you feel the way you do. Both of us are atheists, and we like to joke that we created souls just so we can be soulmates. Perhaps that's part of it too. In this particular instance, my brain seems to know what is best and right for me, and that is Mrs. Cindy McIndy. I've dated people I've cared for before, but I never loved any of them, and none of them were ever right for me. Only Cindy is, and only Cindy ever will be.

[jf12]

12:13 AM on 11/29/2011

That is good! Statistically, the love chemical flow tends to be sustained for a maximum of about 18 months. A few are different.

Some of us are very different. I can voluntarily induce hallucinations, for example visuals bright enough to leave afterimages. I can't voluntarily choose to be in love at random, but I can choose, whenever I will, to feel in love with her who I do love.

[Mindy Czech]

06:40 PM on 11/29/2011

We've known each other since we started the eighth grade at this charter arts school. I had a crush on her from day one, but I didn't think she way gay. It was the same with her. The more I got to know her and the more time we spent together, I realized I was head-over-heels in love with her. We lost touch for awhile when I left that school in the middle of my junior year, but I thought about her quite frequently. We ended up reconnecting a few years ago. She was getting out of an abusive relationship with a guy she was using as a beard. She had the same idea that maybe if she dated guys, she might begin to like them, but it did not work. I ended up telling her a couple weeks after he broke her fingers because she caught him cheating that I was in love with her and had been in love with her since we met back in 1999. She got teary eyed and told me she had been in love with me for all of this time too, and we've been together ever since. We've had a couple of downs, but almost everything has been an up and we are simply inseperable. I love her more every second of every day, and will do so forever.

[pqr728]

04:44 PM on 11/27/2011

Pop song Buddha wisdom (*):

Love hurts
Love stinks
Love is a drug
Love is like a case of anthrax

(*) Nazareth, J.Geils band, Roxy Music, Gang of Four

[PontiusKaramazov]

02:15 PM on 11/26/2011

The material reality of the "soul" doesn't downplay the miracle of its functions. That's what the scientifically illiterate need to realize--our brains are powerful because of an accumulation of evolutionary happenstance, not because Someone put magical stuff into us that makes us complex. Seriously, what's more precious and bewildering, the fact that we love, care, and learn due to millions of years of growth and chance or God doing it? To help the creationists or fundamentally religious out, the latter explanation is a cop-out, duh, and disregards a much deeper world around us and detaches us from our past.

From unicellular to multicellular, to leaves becoming bones, and our brains getting larger when we learned to cook and consume clean meat-- this is all astounding. God was thrown in later so time wouldn't be 'wasted' understanding how miraculous our lives truly are.

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:40 AM on 11/28/2011

I like your style, Pontius. I am very wary of even using the term "soul." I'd prefer to discuss the self or the personality :)

[infonomics]

11:15 AM on 11/26/2011

My, my, so contemporary philosophers and neuroscientists are in accord that all phenomena are material, even love. Gee, I thought love came from the heart.

[Linelle Campbell]

12:21 PM on 11/26/2011

So you think love comes from a pump in our bodies? mmmm... Feelings are just a series of chemical reactions that arise because of stimuli.

[infonomics]

10:49 PM on 11/26/2011

Yes, I agree with you completely. For the record, my last sentence was sarcasm. Also, in the spirit of candor, I confess to the detestation of the heart metaphor. We are, as you say, an embodiment of chemical reactions.

[charlcreat]

11:12 AM on 11/26/2011

So my marriage was a lab experiment? Started out great...lost it's sizzle...hurt(s) but clearly done and over with. Stupid brain!!! Stop interferring!

[elizabeth hershoff]

11:00 AM on 11/26/2011

It seems likely that as humans we would all differ slightly in the amount of the chemicals and receptors in our brains. Could that be why some fall in love so often and others not at all? I am also curious at to the chemicals associated with other states of bliss-like commitment to an ideal or cause or creative "flow" experiences. I would guess these activate the brain in a similar way to fuel our passions in life. I think personally I have shifted my passions towards these relatively "safer" expressions forsaking the need for another person!!! Why mess up a good thing?? Does this make me a realist or a hopeless cynic?? Question number 1000-how does this relate to autism -Asperger's Syndrome brains?? Lack of dopamine?interesting!!

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:38 AM on 11/28/2011

Indeed, there is a general roadmap to neuroanatomy and neurochemistry but there are HUGE individual differences depending upon genetics and experience. I would not doubt that many of these differences correlate with behavioral differences from person to person.

When it comes to autism spectrum disorders, I would love to engage in a more in depth discussion when we begin the month-long conversation about the science of mental health. (It's looking like you guys have voted for that to happen in December!)

[gmikejake]

03:33 PM on 11/28/2011

One of the most helpful parts of the article was the suggestion that sex and chocolate have similar chemical expressions, and chemical consequences, to the mistake of understanding "passion" to mean the requirement of some sort of life time commitment. The glorification of this experience of "passion" in our dominant culture has lead to a LOT of difficulties.

[JayMonaco]

10:47 AM on 11/26/2011

Was this supposed to teach me something? How about we talk about something more interesting than sex and "love."

[jf12]

11:09 AM on 11/26/2011

The null set?

[JayMonaco]

12:53 PM on 11/26/2011

That actually is a little more interesting, yeah.

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:36 AM on 11/28/2011

What would you like to talk about, JayMonaco?

[Dieter Rechtsmann]

09:39 AM on 11/26/2011

THIS is the level of a science writer on HuffPost? Almost below the level of the inane "political theater" and "diversions" that HuffPost wastes it time on.

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:35 AM on 11/28/2011

What would you like to talk about, Dieter? I'd love to hear your suggestions/recommendations. I try my best to take the conversation where the commenter community wants it to go.

[gmikejake]

03:35 PM on 11/28/2011

How about the award winning research by Altemeyer on Right Wing Authoritarians (RWA). Their presence clearly affects the lives of many "different" people, "different" by their definitions.

[Rockyman]

09:00 AM on 11/26/2011

The dynamic of being in-love is oftentimes fragile and fleeting with the pain and grief that accompanies it's ending very sad. I was moved by a saying I read just days ago. It went something like "I've survived love". Most of us know and have felt the heartache on the other side of the bliss!

[gmikejake]

03:36 PM on 11/28/2011

Clearly chocolate may be a more rational choice at times.

[rashawn650]

02:14 AM on 11/26/2011

Nah, I rather talk about Rihanna's Video being banned In France!! OMG

[wonder6789]

12:17 PM on 11/26/2011

Was it really banned there? For not being sexy enough?

[phuqabolic]

11:49 PM on 11/25/2011

maria mariaaaaaaaaaaa!!....you remind me of my westside story!!!

[xAjay]

09:05 PM on 11/25/2011

Jeez, your are one hot intellectual. Thank you for the awesome articles.

[McKayla]

06:50 PM on 11/25/2011

Wow. It's actually so much easier to quantify love scientifically rather than psychologically.

Different people describe romantic love in many different ways- it's probably the broadest term in the English language. Attraction, lust, caring, trust, unconditional, foolish, selfless, selfish, togetherness, overcoming, passion... although their brains might all be getting the same chemical signals, their own experiance of "love" will be altogether unique. It's awe-inspiring and amazing.

[JayMonaco]

10:49 AM on 11/26/2011

Not really--it's just the subjective experience versus the objective reality. You could apply the same thing to absolutely any experience in life.

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:34 AM on 11/28/2011

Also keep in mind that this is a discussion specifically about romantic love, and not an inclusive one by any means!

[AGarcia]

04:57 PM on 11/25/2011

"these things are so difficult to intellectualize"... um, I think you just did Cara. It's a familar biological viewpoint: I got the message that romantic love is similar at times to cocaine or ecstacy but more a overall psychological addiction than a purely physical one. So, could prostitution just be a drug treatment program? Seriously, isn't this more of a philosophical problem about knowledge and the notion of "self". You can't point to an area of the brain and say definitively therein lies the "you". So, how could neuroscience find the "love" in the brains of two people? I'd much rather hear a discussion of love/sex in terms or the male/female psycho-social relationship. For instance, what exchange of power happens in those relationships. How should feminism, sexuality, materialism, masculity relate? I don't think looking towards animals helps that much because they don't have our same kind of hang ups. A male seahorse isn't any less "masculine" to a female because he helps with child rearing. Bonobos don't to get diamond rings on credit to change their in-laws opinions. Reality is messy for humans and science is limited in its ability to explain nature. Scientific reductionism tends to amputate our inate sense of the metaphysical. At least I think that's what the bonobo and seahorse were trying to tell me ;) Anyway, I just think a dash of philosophy and psychology or sociology might get the "nerd" juices going.

[JayMonaco]

10:49 AM on 11/26/2011

Thank you. THAT would actually be interesting.

[Cara Santa Maria]

02:33 AM on 11/28/2011

I do attempt to infuse psychology (which is a science, by the way) whenever possible! But this is a science column :)

[gmikejake]

03:40 PM on 11/28/2011

Please know that the social sciences are all sciences. If this is a science column, then please expand your definition to include ALL of the sciences, not just the "simple ones" like the physical sciences. Experiments are a whole lot easier in physical sciences if only because of the ability to define and control so many more variables.