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Abstract

Love is a highly rewarding experience that underlies bonding – whether between
adult partners or parent and child. It is thus part of a biological mechanism of
existential importance for species bearing non-autonomous offspring. My lecture
will review – from a biological perspective – evolutionary as well as physiological
fundaments of partner selection and bonding (maternal as well as between adults).
In particular I will report the results of the fi rst two human functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that reveal neural substrates involved in both
romantic and maternal love, and highlight commonalities as well as differences of
our results with those obtained in other species. In particular, I hope our research
will encourage further studies into the physiological foundations of human
bonding, which, in contrast to corresponding research in animals or in human
psychology, has faced a curious hesitation until recently. Our studies revealed highly
overlapping brain regions between the two types of love. The activated regions
are related to the reward system and coincided with areas rich in receptors for the
neurohormones oxytocin and vasopressin, which have been shown in animals to be
both necessary and suffi cient to induce bonding. The hypothalamus, involved in
sexual arousal, was activated only with romantic attachment, and constitutes one
of several differentially activated regions with the two types of love. Finally, both
studies revealed a common set of de-activated regions associated with negative
emotions, social judgment and ‘mentalizing’, that is, the assessment of other
people’s intentions and emotions. Human attachment seems thus to employ a
push– pull mechanism activated when individuals face a loved one. This overcomes
social distance by deactivating networks used for critical social assessment and
negative emotions, and while it bonds individuals through the involvement of the
reward circuitry, explaining the power of love to motivate and exhilarate.