People from all over the world describe the feeling of love as euphoria, exhilaration, elation etc. The feeling of love is an intense craving that one person has for the other that they love. The researchers just dug out as to what are the brain processes through which it responds in romantic love.

The researchers studied the reason as to what makes the feeling of love so intense. They found out that the brain just perceives romantic love as a reward and stimulates the brain activity in the reward area of the brain, which occurs to any reward such as getting a chocolate, money etc.
The researcher mentioned that in her view, the romantic love was a drive, which is pretty strong and intense.

The researchers studied about 17 people who have fallen in love and to explain that, according to them they were unable to think of anything else for the most of the day than the one they love and the average time that these people have been in love was about seven months.

The researchers developed a questionnaire in which they asked about questions regarding passionate love and if they would die for their partner and the researchers said that they were amazed to hear that all of the people who were interviewed said that they would and they responded to that in a very casual way.

The participants of the study were then asked to look at the photograph of their love while they were put in an MRI machine to see as to what parts of their brain are responding to when they see the pictures and they saw that the part of the brain that lit up after they saw the pictures was the reward and pleasure area.

It was astonishing to find that the reward area got lit up when the researchers were trying to find out as to what areas of the brain are going to respond when the people would see the pictures of their lovers. So that meant that love is just a reward, which is like chocolate or money.

The area of the brain that lit up was in the brain stem, which is known as the ventral tegmental area. In that area, the pigmented cells contain the neurotransmitter dopamine, which sends messages to the part of the brain known as caudate nucleus.

The researcher said that it has changed the way that she thinks about love. She says it is a motivation and the individual that we love is a goal. The emotions, they just come and go. The researcher also added that the system that is driving the person that we are in love with is sense than an emotion.

The researchers added that love was not only an emotion, it was a basic mating drive, much stronger than the sex drive. They also added that the early feeling of love just does not remain forever such as the pounding of the heart, thinking about the love all the time, but in good relationships it just crosses onto a different stage of love known as attachment.

There was another pretty interesting comment made by the researcher on love, which was that when love is seen under microscope, it just takes away a bit of the mystery and romance.

The researcher also added that even if we know as to what are the ingredients in a cake, but we still love to eat that cake and even knowing about love, we can feel all the passion and desire of it.

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