Can science prove that you’re in love?

Love has long been thought of as an abstract concept, or a feeling best expressed through poetry or song, but new research from universities in New York and China suggests that it is something quite different. They believe that science may actually be able to tell if a person is in love.
The research, published online last month in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) scans to measure the physical effects of love on the activity in different regions of the human mind.
By doing so, they were effectively able create what The Telegraph refers to as a “love map” of the human mind, showing the first empirical evidence of physical alterations in the brain caused by love. Their research showed that the brains of people who reported that they were in love had increased activity in the parts of the brain associated to motivation and reward.
Underlying mechanisms of romantic love
The study authors, who included scientists from Southwest University, the University of Science and Technology of China and from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, explained that their findings provided new insight into the “underlying mechanisms of romantic love,” and that it could eventually lead to a brain scan that could test if a person was truly in love.
They recruited 100 students from Southwest University, which is located in the Chinese city of Chongqing, and divided them into three groups based on their current relationship status: a group of people who were in love, a group that had recently broken off romantic relationships, and one made up of single men and women who said that they had never been in love.
Each of those individuals were instructed to not think of anything while they underwent rsfMRI scans so that the differences in the brains of all three groups could be monitored. The researchers found that the “in love” category showed increased activity in several regions, including the parts of the brain dealing with reward, motivation, emotional regulation, and social cognition.

Furthermore, the level of activity in some of those parts was associated with the amount of time that the individual had been in love. For the “ended love” group, the study authors found that the activity levels in those regions decreased as the amount of time since their relationships came to an end increased, suggesting that falling out of love undoes these changes to the brain.
In their study, they wrote that their research “provides [the] first empirical evidence of love-related alterations in brain functional architecture. Furthermore, the results shed light on the underlying neural mechanisms of romantic love, and demonstrates the possibility of applying a resting-state fMRI approach for investigating romantic love.”
“Understanding positive emotional states may be crucial for further development of treatment,” she added. “This research may be relevant for developing treatment for people who have difficulty engaging in social relationships, interventions to alleviate the negative impact of breakup, and also in treatment of psychiatric disorders in general.”
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