Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Export

@article{citeulike:339274, abstract = {Early-stage romantic love can induce euphoria, is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and is possibly a developed form of a mammalian drive to pursue preferred mates. It has an important influence on social behaviors that have reproductive and genetic consequences. To determine which reward and motivation systems may be involved, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and studied 10 women and 7 men who were intensely "in love" from 1 to 17 mo. Participants alternately viewed a photograph of their beloved and a photograph of a familiar individual, interspersed with a distraction-attention task. Group activation specific to the beloved under the two control conditions occurred in dopamine-rich areas associated with mammalian reward and motivation, namely the right ventral tegmental area and the right postero-dorsal body and medial caudate nucleus. Activation in the left ventral tegmental area was correlated with facial attractiveness scores. Activation in the right anteromedial caudate was correlated with questionnaire scores that quantified intensity of romantic passion. In the left insula-putamen-globus pallidus, activation correlated with trait affect intensity. The results suggest that romantic love uses subcortical reward and motivation systems to focus on a specific individual, that limbic cortical regions process individual emotion factors, and that there is localization heterogeneity for reward functions in the human brain.}, address = {Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA.}, author = {Aron, A. and Fisher, H. and Mashek, D. J. and Strong, G. and Li, H. and Brown, L. L.}, citeulike-article-id = {339274}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00838.2004}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15928068}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=15928068}, doi = {10.1152/jn.00838.2004}, issn = {0022-3077}, journal = {J Neurophysiol}, keywords = {dopamine, early-stage, emotion, fmri, human, reward}, month = {July}, number = {1}, pages = {327--337}, posted-at = {2008-01-24 16:12:16}, priority = {2}, title = {Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00838.2004}, volume = {94}, year = {2005} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:339274 L3 - citeulike-article-id:339274 N2 - Early-stage romantic love can induce euphoria, is a cross-cultural phenomenon, and is possibly a developed form of a mammalian drive to pursue preferred mates. It has an important influence on social behaviors that have reproductive and genetic consequences. To determine which reward and motivation systems may be involved, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and studied 10 women and 7 men who were intensely "in love" from 1 to 17 mo. Participants alternately viewed a photograph of their beloved and a photograph of a familiar individual, interspersed with a distraction-attention task. Group activation specific to the beloved under the two control conditions occurred in dopamine-rich areas associated with mammalian reward and motivation, namely the right ventral tegmental area and the right postero-dorsal body and medial caudate nucleus. Activation in the left ventral tegmental area was correlated with facial attractiveness scores. Activation in the right anteromedial caudate was correlated with questionnaire scores that quantified intensity of romantic passion. In the left insula-putamen-globus pallidus, activation correlated with trait affect intensity. The results suggest that romantic love uses subcortical reward and motivation systems to focus on a specific individual, that limbic cortical regions process individual emotion factors, and that there is localization heterogeneity for reward functions in the human brain. IS - 1 JF - J Neurophysiol SN - 0022-3077 AD - Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA. EP - 337 TI - Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. VL - 94 SP - 327 KW - dopamine KW - early-stage KW - emotion KW - fmri KW - human KW - reward AU - Aron, A AU - Fisher, H AU - Mashek, DJ AU - Strong, G AU - Li, H AU - Brown, LL PY - 2005/07// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1152/jn.00838.2004 ER -