The dinner date is at 9 pm. and the hours that separate you from it seem like an eternity and a day. At 8.30 p.m. you rush into the car to meet the object of your lust.
As the car runs down the streets to your loved one, it “runs a thousand” with him inside your brain dopamine – in fact this neurotransmitter behind sugar, nicotine and cocaine addiction overwhelms your brain’s reward center making you want to arrive an hour earlier.
Now let’s change this scenario by putting in the place of the lover/mistress a partner with whom you have arranged at 9 p.m. a business dinner.
In your particular case, it seems that dinner is the one that will last a boring eternity and a day – and this is because there is no “river” of dopamine flowing in your brain in anticipation of meeting your partner, but instead the river is almost drained.
The catalytic role of dopamine in love and lust is revealed by a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU Boulder) led by Associate Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience Dr. Zoe Donaldson, which was published in the scientific journal “Current Biology.”
As reported by Dr. Donaldson in Vima-Science “What we discovered is a biological imprint of desire that helps us explain why we want to be with some people more than others.”
Monogamous mammals
The brain secrets of love were revealed to scientists through a small rodent, the so-called prairie mouse (Microtus ochrogaster).
The choice of this experimental animal model was not accidental, the professor explained: «Unlike most mammal species, prairie voles are monogamous: they make relationships that resemble human relationships between partners, share the same house, raise their young together, go through mourning when they lose their mate.’
According to Dr Donaldson, the research team felt that studying this animal model of “together forever” could shed light on both what happens in the human brain when people form romantic relationships and how they exceed from a neurochemical point of view.
And the spotlight fell on the neurotransmitter dopamine, showing for the first time its key role in keeping the love flame burning. «Our study shows that some people leave a unique chemical imprint on our brains that leads us to maintain long-term bonds with them».
Neurobiological mobilization
To conduct their study, the researchers used neuroimaging technology to measure, in real time, what was happening in the rodents’ brains as they tried to reach their mate through different obstacles.
During this process of reuniting partners a fiber-optic sensor recorded millisecond-level activity in the brain’s nucleus accumbensan area tasked with motivating people to seek rewards of different kinds – from water and food to drugs.
Every time the sensor detected dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens it lit up, and even lit up continuously both during the two partners’ attempt to reunite and when they now met and hugged. However, this did not happen when in the second room there was a rodent that was not the match of the one who made the effort to approach it.
The findings testify, according to the professor, that “dopamine is not only important in terms of motivating one to seek out one’s mate but is released in even greater amounts from the brain’s reward center when he is with his partner compared to when he was with a stranger».
Romantic reboot
In another experiment the research team kept the two partners apart for four weeks. When the partners met again, they remembered each other, but the “biological signature” of the release of a large amount of dopamine in the brain had almost disappeared.
Essentially, the lust, the longing for the mate was now gone and the neuroimaging showed a brain response similar to that of any other unrelated mouse.
“It’s like the brain is rebooting, allowing the animal to move on with its life and possibly make a new bond, which couldn’t happen while dopamine was being released in the brain at high levels.” the teacher pointed out.
We asked her how those four “mouse” weeks would translate to human ones—commonly, how long it would take for a human to get over a breakup.
«It is difficult to reduce people as in human relationships there are many factors that play a role – the time the relationship lasted but also its depth.
However, we have to think that four weeks in the life of a field mouse is a long time, given that its life expectancy is at most two years, so even in humans a serious, deep bond is not quickly overcome.”
Apparently, love with a decrease in dopamine in the nucleus accumbens passes.
Towards treatments for grief
The new findings, according to Dr. Donaldson, could pave the way for treatments for people who have experienced a painful breakup or loss of a partner.
The teacher explained that 7%-10% of people who lose (literally or figuratively) their partner have difficulty moving on with their lives.
“This kind of behavior has recently been given the official name of prolonged bereavement disorder. It is possible that in these individuals the dopamine signal does not adapt, does not decrease after loss or separation.
Our ultimate goal is to find ways to help people with protracted bereavement disorder by identifying the biological changes that will help them adapt to the new condition of loss and take their lives back into their own hands.
This type of research may lead to more personalized forms of psychotherapy or even pharmacological treatments that will enhance the beneficial effect of psychotherapy.”
#imprint #love #brain
