Abstract
The neural correlates of many emotional states have been studied,
most recently through the technique of fMRI. However, nothing is
known about the neural substrates involved in evoking one of the
most overwhelming of all affective states, that of romantic love,
about which we report here. The activity in the brains of 17 subjects
who were deeply in love was scanned using fMRI, while they viewed
pictures of their partners, and compared with the activity produced
by viewing pictures of three friends of similar age, sex and duration
of friendship as their partners. The activity was restricted to foci
in the medial insula and the anterior cingulate cortex and, subcortically,
in the caudate nucleus and the putamen, all bilaterally. Deactivations
were observed in the posterior cingulate gyrus and in the amygdala
and were right-lateralized in the prefrontal, parietal and middle
temporal cortices. The combination of these sites differs from those
in previous studies of emotion, suggesting that a unique network
of areas is responsible for evoking this affective state. This leads
us to postulate that the principle of functional specialization in
the cortex applies to affective states as well.
- adult,arousal,arousal:
- behavior,sexual
- behavior:
- imaging,male,nervous
- phenomena,sexual
- physiological
- physiology
- physiology,attention,attention:
- physiology,brain,brain:
- physiology,computer-assisted,face,female,galvanic
- processing,love,magnetic
- resonance
- response,humans,image
- skin
- system
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