Love in the fMRI

Nothing Free and Open Source in this, just an interesting article on the use of functional MRI to discover what parts of the brain are activated when people are in love, and when they’ve been rejected. Short version: ‘…The chief sections affected by the photo rapture test were the caudate nucleus (a lump deep in the reptilian brain that helps creatures ”detect and perceive a reward” and focus their attention on anything that might bring arousal, pleasure and satisfaction) and the ventral tegmental area (V.T.A.), which Fisher describes as the dopamine ”mother lode.” Some 6,000 images later, her hypothesis was proved right: the caudate and the V.T.A. lit up like a scoreboard every time the lover saw the image of the loved…’

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