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Make fun, if you must, but it turns out that love may not fade with time, after all —  and leaves a lasting impression in our brains as well as our hearts, according to a recent study.

Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York scanned the brains of 10 women and seven men who had been married an average of 21 years and insisted they were still madly in love with their spouses. When the scientists showed the subjects photos of their partners, the fMRIs detected intense activity in the ventral tegmental area of their brains, a region that produces the pleasure-giving neurotransmitter dopamine. A previous study of 17 people in the early, lustful months of relationships showed similar activity in the same brain area, a core component of our motivation and reward network.

"It's always been assumed that passionate love inevitably declines over time," study co-author Arthur Aron, a social psychologist, told Newsday. "But in survey after survey we always have these people who have been together a long time and say they are intensely in love. It was always chalked up to self-deception or trying to make a good impression."

But Aron and his three colleagues found more than just lasting passion in the happy couples. Their scans also showed activity in their ventral pallidum, a brain region associated with feelings of long-term attachment in voles, and in the raphe nucleus, which makes the chemical serotonin that’s associated with calm and less obsession.

This, anthropologist Helen Fisher tells us today, is “the real difference between early-stage and late-stage romantic love: You feel that deep attachment and that you want to be with the person, but you don’t have that early, manic obsession of when you first fall in love of if you don’t hear from the person you cry.”

The study was presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

"If you ask people around the world whether romantic love can last, they'll roll their eyes and say 'probably not,' and most textbooks say that, too,” Fisher, of Rutgers University, told USA Today then. “We're proving them wrong."

Image © iStockphoto/Joseph Jean Rolland Dubé

7 Comments

1. 1. candide 03:58 PM 1/6/09

   So, what they have now is a LOVE polygraph?

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2. 2. 59th Street 04:45 PM 1/6/09

   Scary to expect that one can require one's partner to submit to a brain scan, maybe, to see if avowals of love are 'real'.

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3. 3. Astor 07:36 PM 1/6/09

   What would they find in the brain of a stalker or someone attached due to insecurity and not "love" ?

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4. 4. Daniel Normington in reply to Astor 07:11 AM 1/7/09

   I don't accept that it has always been assumed that passionate love declines over time. I know for sure that, right now, there are many Christian books about building good marriages which assume the opposite; and I strongly suspect that there is a sizeable body of historical and even ancient literature, premised upon the biblical models of love and relationship, that does the same. I recognise that the sociology, neurophysiology, psychology and related literature - all relatively recent fields, of course, compared to age of Judaism or Christianity - may not agree (until now). But my suspicion is that is simply a reflection of the bulk of relationships they are studying not being built on the biblical model (or any similar one) - which would include exclusivity, lifetime commitment, mutual giving, mutual serving and believing the other to be made in God's image, and therefore massively valuable, among other things. In recent history, fewer and fewer relationships have these kinds of hallmarks; and it is, I posit, precisely those relationships which remain passionately loving. I don't mean to suggest for a moment that Christians (or Jews) are the only people who do build relationships this way, or that all Christians/Jews do this; it's just that I am familiar with that literature. I suspect, in effect, that modern science has concluded that passionate love doesn't last just because most of its research has been done in social and cultural contexts where people don't build the kind of relationships where pasionate love does last. I bet that many people, in other social and cultural contexts, had very good grounds for believing that it did. I'm glad science is now catching the subset of the sample that demonstrates this wonderful possibility; and I look forward to throrough and rigorous scientific research which can identify what is different about these relationships. Who doesn't want to know that?

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5. 5. Jacyj1 06:01 PM 1/7/09

   How many married couples had to be screened (and rejected) in order to find these 17 who are stil so deeply in love?
   In our age of 50% divorce, what secret do these subjects share?

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6. 6. Colonel Molerat 05:53 AM 1/8/09

   "Their scans also showed activity in their ventral pallidum, a brain region associated with feelings of long-term attachment in voles"
   How do they measure long-term attachment in voles?! Ask if they've taken out a joint mortgage on their nest??
   I know, I know, I'm being flippant........
   What does this mean by 'passionate' love? Love in a sexual way? I've always assumed that people who remain married for years often remain passionate about each other in a non-sexual way - hence when one member of an elderly couple dies, the other seems to wither away and often dies within the year.
   Surely it's not odd to see brain signals associated with 'positive' thoughts in somebody looking at the person they've spent most of their free time with for the last few decades, unless they actively disliked that person?
   
   I've only just got round to seeking out SciAm - rather than stumbling upon its articles - after listening to the podcast this morning. I hope I remember to bookmark it tonight...

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7. 7. outinarizona 09:01 PM 1/9/09

   It's always been assumed that passionate love inevitably declines over "time."
   
   Really? Since when? My husband and I have been wonderfully in love for over 15 years. Every day renews our passion for one another. We are more in love now than we were in the beginning.
   
   "It was always chalked up to self-deception or trying to make a good impression."
   
   Sounds like jealousy to me. Marriage is hard work, yes, and the only way it works is to communicate 100%. No secrets. Too many folks out there play those nonsensical mind games and think it's okay to hide things from one another. You can't do that.
   
   That goes double for those who get together with the intent of, "I can change him or her." That will never work, either.

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