Love is described as the best feeling a being could ever feel. It changes your perception of life and improves many functions of your body and brain. Love is a combination of many feelings; happiness, sadness, anger, anxiousness, calm, delightfulness, depression, disappointment, enthusiast, and others. All these feelings stem from our brain, even if we think that love is felt with the heart. Most of the things in our lives stem from our brains. In the following article, we will discover 5 ways love can affect our brain.
1- FALLING IN LOVE CAN CAUSE A HORMONAL RUSH
Falling in love happens due to many reactions in the brain. These reactions happen because of the different hormones being released in that organ. These hormones include oxytocin, known as the love hormone, dopamine or the pleasure hormone, and some hormones linked to sex such as testosterone and estrogen. Other hormones can be found during the hormonal rush that love creates in your brain, such as adrenaline that causes the rush of heartbeats. All those hormones are responsible for the different feelings you go through when you are in love with someone.
2- LOVE CAN BECOME AN ADDICTION
The desire of wanting to see or be with the person you love all the time is similar to an addiction. According to researchers, love can be like a drug, and falling in love activates the same system that gets activated when drugs enter your body or system.
3- LOVE AFFECTS YOUR FOCUS AND YOUR MENTALITY
When you are in love, your brain wanders frequently and your thoughts go to your beloved. You are thinking of that person, wishing to be with them. Your brain escapes from the reality you are currently in and takes you to another reality that you wish you were living. For this reason, you might find yourself frequently unable to focus on your tasks. Also, your mind is affected by the ups and downs of your relationship, as you will find yourself happy and excited when it is going well, and anxious when you fight with your significant other.
4- LOVE CAN STRENGTHEN YOUR EMPATHY
If your love relationship is based on the practice of loving and kindness meditation, the part of your brain responsible for empathy and emotion-processing will be activated. This will also reduce activity in brain areas that are linked with self-focused thoughts. Loving-kindness meditation helps us get in touch with our feelings by growing the gray matter volume in the brain areas related to emotion processing.
5- DIFFERENT STAGES OF LOVE CAN CHANGE YOUR BRAIN ACTIVITY DIFFERENTLY
Based on a study published recently in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, MRI scans can define the stage of love in which a person in love is currently. falling in love activates the reward center of your brain while breaking up decreases the activity in that area. The latter also reduces activity and functional connectivity in the brain area that expects rewards.
