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BI 360: Assignment #1
1. Title: Reward, Motivation, and Emotion Systems Associated With Early-Stage Intense
Romantic Love
Authors: Aron Arthur, Helen Fisher, Debra J. Mashek, Greg Strong, Haifang Li, and Lucy L.
Brown
Published: Journal of Neurophysiology, Volume 94.1, pages 327-37
Year: 2005
2. The major scientific enterprise of this paper was to study which reward and motivation
systems are activated during the early stages of intense romantic love. Specifically, the research
team chose two experimental questions to direct their investigation: 1) Based upon behavioral
similarities between the effects of cocaine and the effects of early-stage intense romantic love, as
well as research done on prairie vole monogamy, are the VTA (ventral tegmental area), nucleus
accumbens, and striatum active in the human brain during the early stages of intense romantic
love? 2) Due to its role in reward detection and expectation, the representation of goals, and the
idea that love may be categorized as a goal-directed state, is the anterior caudate nucleus
activated in the human brain during the early stages of intense romantic love?
To test the experimental questions, a single experiment was conducted. Participants were
interviewed and surveyed about two people in their lives: their beloved, and a person towards
whom they had neutral feelings. Whilst in an fMRI machine, participants were alternately shown
a picture of their beloved and their neutral acquaintance and asked to think about the person
being shown. Between stimuli, participants were asked to count back from a random, large
number in increments of seven in order to essentially reset their activation levels.
The researchers found that when viewing the beloved in comparison to viewing the
neutral acquaintance, participants showed greater activation levels in the right medial caudate,
the right antero-dorsal body, another region of the right dorsal body, the right

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BA30/Retrosplenial cortex, as well as the bilateral caudate activations in the antero-dorsal
region. In addition, activation was localized to the VTA/A10 dopamine cells in the ventral
midbrain.
When viewing the beloved in comparison to when performing the countback task,
participants also showed differences in the right ventral midbrain and the right postero-dorsal
caudate, overlapping with the results found from the beloved versus neutral analysis.
Additionally, those who scored high on the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) were also observed to
have higher activation levels in the right antero-medial caudate body and the septum-fornix
region. Furthermore, three regions in the brain had differing levels of activation when correlated
with the participants length of relationship: the right mid-insular cortex, the right anterior and
posterior cingulate cortex, and the right posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex. Specifically, the
left posterior cingulate cortex/retrosplenial cortex region was the only brain region to show
greater activation the shorter the period of intense romantic love.
4. The researchers concluded that these results confirmed both of their hypotheses. First,
they concluded that early-stage intense romantic love is correlated with reward areas in the
subcortical region that are additionally dopamine-rich. Secondly, the results gave support for the
idea of love being a goal-directed state, rather than an emotional state, because there was
signification activation involving neural systems geared towards motivation associated with
reward-acquisition. Additionally, Arthur et al. specifically mention that the medial caudate body
where activation was found is known to be involved in dopamine release due to reward.
The researchers also concluded that the activation in cortical areas associated with
emotion (i.e. the insular and cingulate cortex) still supported their theory of early stage romantic
love being a goal-directed state. The activation in these areas was extremely varied between

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participants, which would be expected for a goal-directed state with many nuanced potential
outcomes. They concluded that the two subcortical regions involved in emotion that were
changed, the decreased activation of the amygdala and the increased activation of the septum,
also supported their ideas. The decrease in amygdala activity was interpreted to suggest a
decrease in the fear response, while the increase in septum activity was correlated with higher
scores on the Passionate Love Scale. These changes in subcortical activity would contribute to
the intensity and reward perceived by the participants as a result of intense romantic love.
These results were justified with evidence from previous studies that have established
that the VTA and caudate nucleus (both activated due to the positive stimuli of the beloved) are
central players in reward and motivation in mammals. Furthermore, several measures were taken
to eliminate confounds (e.g. controlling for effects of attractiveness, effects of general tendency
for emotional tendency) in order to lend greater validity to the data.
5.

While this study was conducted as a cross-sectional study, further data could be

collected about the subsequent stages of love and their neural activations if participants were
subjected to the same experiment at intervals of 1 year for a decade after the initial experiment.
The development of this longitudinal design could provide further insight into which brain
regions are isolated to the early stages of intense romantic love, and which can be generalized to
all stages of intense romantic love.
Additionally, the same experimental design could be used for a new study that used the
same stimuli, but measured activity with an EEG instead of fMRI. In addition to looking for
regions that show greater activation due to a picture of the beloved, types and areas of brain
waves could also be monitored to look for patterns correlated specifically with the positive
stimuli only.