Love Literally Changes the Structure of Your Brain

Dr. Hongwen Song and colleagues at Southwest University used fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows simultaneous neural and metabolic activity in different brain regions) to study three groups: those currently intensely in love (Love Group), a group who had all recently ended a loving relationship (End Love), and a group professing never to have been in love (Single).

In Song et al’s study, marked differences in both functional connectivity and regional homogeneity were seen among the three groups:

1. Regional homogeneity of the left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area believed to play a role in the regulation of emotions, (7) was greater in the Love Group than either the End Love Group or Single Group.
2. Regional homogeneity in the left ACC of Love Group subjects increased with increasing duration of being in love, while in the End Love Group, left ACC homogeneity increased as the length of time since a painful breakup increased.
3. Functional connectivity among different regions of the so-called “motivation-reward” network (encompassing ACC, insula, caudate, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens) and the “social cognition” network (temporo-parietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal, precuneus, and temporal lobe) was greater in the In Love Group than the other two groups.
4. In most regions of both the “motivation reward” and “social cognition” networks, functional connectivity in the In Love group increased with increasing duration of the loving relationship, and in the End Love group increased with the amount of time lapsed from a painful breakup.

Within a specific brain region, such as the cingulate cortex, resting state activity of different populations of neurons also can either be correlated or uncorrelated, where correlated activity implies rich local connectivity and uncorrelated activity, a lesser degree of connectivity. To the extent neurons within a region display correlated resting activity, that region is considered to have regional homogeneity, whereas lack of such correlation implies regional inhomogeneity. Taken together, these findings imply that being in love literally helps your brain “keep itself together” while being single or lovelorn seems to have the opposite effect.