Most Amazing fMRI Study!

I came across an awesome fMRI study that was performed in 2005 by Helen Fisher, Arthur Aron, and Lucy Brown examining romantic love. The researchers examined 17 individuals who were "intensively" in love. Each participants was first screened for the level of romantic love through interview and the Passion Love Scale, which measures several characteristics commonly associated with romantic love. After screening, fMRI was used. The study employed photographs and consisted of four tasks: For 30 seconds, the subject viewed a photo of his/her significant other. Following this, he/she was performed a countback distraction task for 40 seconds. Then, he/she viewed for 30 seconds a photo of an emotionally neutral acquaintaince. The last 20 seconds consisted of a similar countback task. The researchers included the countback task "to decrease the carryover effect after the participant viewed the positive stimulus because it is difficult to quell intense feelings of romantic love." This four-step process was repeated six times for more accurate fMRI readings. The researchers found that upon viewing the photo of their significant other and not in any of the other three tasks, subjects had high activation in their right ventral tegmental area and right caudate nucleus, which are dopamine-rich areas associated with reward and motivation. They concluded that dopaminergic reward pathways contribute to the "general arousal" component of romantic love and that romantic love is primarily a motivation system rather than an emotion. I think this fMRI study is really fascinating as it examines something as nebulous as love. To be able to take the step towards understanding love scientifically is both slightly controversial and shows how far science has come.

Here is the link to the paper for those of you who are interested: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.20772/pdf