Study love is like an addiction

Study: Love acts like an addiction.

(12.07.2010) US researchers have found that love - especially heartache - looks like a natural addiction. In the process, areas in the brain are activated, which are also addressed in other addictions.

Lovesickness could be seen as a withdrawal phenomenon, and anyone who has ever been affected by it will already have guessed. A passionate love, the researchers say, is like a natural addiction. Scientists of the US "Albert Einstein College of Medicine" have undertaken a brain study with ten women and five men to prove this assumption. The study participants were left two months earlier, by their former partners, and suffered severely from the separation. The subjects thought to 85 percent in their spare time or at work on their past partners and show symptoms of a lovesickness.

During the study, men and women were shown pictures of their former partners. The scientists observed brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRT). When viewing the images, activities in the so-called "reward center" in the brain could be detected, which is also active in cocaine addicts. In addition, numerous areas of the human brain were activated, which are responsible for an addictive behavior.

The study could help explain why people with lovesickness are sometimes inclined to obsessive behavior. Especially if they are rejected by their partner or lover. The researchers published their study results in the journal "Journal of Neurophysiology". "Romantic love seems to be a natural addiction in both fortunate and unfortunate circumstances," says study author Lucy Brown. Lovesickness seems to be a necessary part of our life, which nature has built in, Brown said. But as the saying goes: "Time heals all wounds" and this was also confirmed during the course of the study. The longer the separation from the ex-partner was, the less the "reward center" was activated when seeing images of the excreted in the brain. That makes many people hope, eventually the pain goes away and you're open to a new bond. (Sb)