Helen

Helen E. Fisher, Lucy L. Brown, Arthur Aron, Greg Strong, and Debra Mashek (May 2010)
Journal of Neurophysiology 104: 51-60, 2010

Romantic rejection causes a profound sense of loss and negative affect. It can induce clinical depression and in extreme cases lead to suicide and/or homicide. To begin to identify the neural systems associated with this natural loss state, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study 10 women and 5 men who had recently been rejected by a partner but reported they were still intensely “in love.” Participants alternately viewed a photograph of their rejecting beloved and a photograph of a familiar, individual, interspersed with a distraction-attention task. Their responses while looking at their rejecter included love, despair, good, and bad memories, and wondering why this happened. Activation specific to the image of the beloved occurred in areas associated with gains and losses, craving and emotion regulation and included the ventral tegmental area (VTA) bilaterally, ventral striatum, medial and lateral orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex, and cingulate gyrus. Compared with data from happily-in-love individuals, the regional VTA activation suggests that mesolimbic reward/survival systems are involved in romantic passion regardless of whether one is happily or unhappily in love. Forebrain activations associated with motivational relevance, gain/loss, cocaine craving, addiction, and emotion regulation suggest that higher-order systems subject to experience and learning also may mediate the rejection reaction. The results show activation of reward systems, previously identified by monetary stimuli, in a natural, endogenous, negative emotion state. Activation of areas involved in cocaine addiction may help explain the obsessive behaviors associated with rejection in love.

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Fisher, H and JA Thomson Jr. (2007)
Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. SM Platek, JP Keenan and TK Shakelford (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 245-283.

Today, millions of people of reproductive age take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and other serotonin-enhancing antidepressants. Approximately 80% of these drugs are prescribed by nonpsychiatric physicians, including internists, general practitioners, pediatricians, and gynecologists, who disseminate them to a wide array of men and women. In the first five months of 2004, American doctors wrote 46 million prescriptions for antidepressants, largely for these drugs. In the United States alone, antidepressants account for $14 billion a year in wholesale revenues (Morais, 2004).

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Fisher, H and JA Thomson Jr. (2007)
Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience. SM Platek, JP Keenan and TK Shakelford (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pp. 245-283.

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Fisher, H, A Aron and LL Brown (2006)
“The Neurobiology of Social Recognition, Attraction and Bonding,” Keith Kendrick (Ed), Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. 361:2173-2186

Mammals and birds regularly express mate preferences and make mate choices. Data on mate choice among mammals suggest that this behavioural ‘attraction system’ is associated with dopaminergic reward pathways in the brain. It has been proposed that intense romantic love, a human crosscultural universal, is a developed form of this attraction system. To begin to determine the neural mechanisms associated with romantic attraction in humans, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study 17 people who were intensely ‘in love’. Activation specific to the beloved occurred in the brainstem right ventral tegmental area and right postero-dorsal body of the caudate nucleus. These and other results suggest that dopaminergic reward and motivation pathways contribute to aspects of romantic love. We also used fMRI to study 15 men and women who had just been rejected in love. Preliminary analysis showed activity specific to the beloved in related regions of the reward system associated with monetary gambling for uncertain large gains and losses, and in regions of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex associated with theory of mind, obsessive/compulsive behaviours and controlling anger. These data contribute to our view that romantic love is one of the three primary brain systems that evolved in avian and mammalian species to direct reproduction. The sex drive evolved to motivate individuals to seek a range of mating partners; attraction evolved to motivate individuals to prefer and pursue specific partners; and attachment evolved to motivate individuals to remain together long enough to complete species-specific parenting duties. These three behavioural repertoires appear to be based on brain systems that are largely distinct yet interrelated, and they interact in specific ways to orchestrate reproduction, using both hormones and monoamines. Romantic attraction in humans and its antecedent in other mammalian species play a primary role: this neural mechanism motivates individuals to focus their courtship energy on specific others, thereby conserving valuable time and metabolic energy, and facilitating mate choice.

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Fisher, H (2006)
Romance and Sex in Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: Risks and Opportunities. A Booth and C Crouter (Eds). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

“Oh, tell me the truth about love,” poet W. H. Auden wrote. Poems, dramas, novels, songs, stories, myths, legends, and men and women around the world have attempted to describe love. The earliest love poems come from ancient Sumeria some 4,000 years ago (Wolkenstein, 1991). But our forbears probably mused about love since they evolved the rudiments of language and spoke across their campfires over a million years ago. Love means many different things to many different people. But this multi-faceted experience is becoming understood.

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Fisher, H (2006)
Cut Loose: (mostly) midlife and older women on the end of (mostly) long-term relaionships. Nan Bauer-Maglin (Ed.) New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

“Parting is all we need to know of hell.”
—Emily Dickinson

“Fires run through my body—the pain of loving you. Pain runs through my body with the fires of my love for you. Sickness wanders my body with my love for you. Pain like a boil about to burst with my love for you. I remember what you said to me. I am thinking of your love for me. I am torn by your love for me. Pain and more pain. Where are you going with my love? I’m told you will go from here. I am told you will leave me here. My body is numb with grief. Remember what I said, my love. Goodbye, my love, goodbye.” This poem, recited by an anonymous Kwakuitl Indian of southern Alaska to a missionary in 1896, captures the excruciating pain of lost love.

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Fisher, H (2006)
The New Psychology of Love, 2nd Edition. RJ Sternberg and K Weis (Eds.) New Haven: Yale University Press

“Since the heaven and earth were created, you were made for me and I was made for you and I will not let you go,” declared Chang Po to his beloved Meilan (Yutang, 1954, p. 73). The Chinese still cry over this twelfth-century Chinese fable, “The Jade Goddess,” their version of Romeo and Julie. “My beloved, the delight of my eyes,” exclaimed Inanna of her beloved Dumuzi in a Sumerian poem recorded some four thousand years ago (Wolkenstein, 1991, p. 51). An anonymous Kwakiutl Indian of southern Alaska recited these words in 1896: “Fires run through my body—the pain of loving you” (Hamill, 1996).

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J Reid Meloy and H Fisher (2005)
Journal of Forensic Sciences, 50#6:1472-1480

The authors examine the crime of stalking, including the cognitive traits, emotional reactions, attachment pathology, violence patterns and sex differences of samples of stalking offenders. They focus on two common types of stalkers: 1) those who sustain pursuit of a former sexual intimate who has rejected them; and 2) those who pursue a stranger or acquaintance who has failed to return the stalker’s romantic overtures. The authors discuss data from neuroimaging (fMRI) studies of romantic love which suggest that these forms of stalking may be associated with heightened activity of subcortical dopaminergic pathways of the “Reward System” of the brain, perhaps in combination with low activity of central serotonin. The authors propose that this set of neural correlates may contribute to the stalker’s focused attention, increased energy, following behaviors, obsessive thinking about and impulsivity directed toward the victim.

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H. Fisher, A Aron and LL Brown (2005)
Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493:58-62.

Scientists have described myriad traits in mammalian and avian species that evolved to attract mates. But the brain mechanisms by which conspecifics become attracted to these traits is largely unknown. Yet mammals and birds express mate preferences and make mate choices, and data suggest that this “attraction system” is associated with the dopaminergic reward system. It has been proposed that intense romantic love, a cross-cultural universal, is a developed form of this attraction system. To determine the neural mechanisms associated with romantic love we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and studied 17 people who were intensely “in love” (Aron et al. [2005] J Neurophysiol 94:327-337).

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Fisher, H, A Aron, D Mashek, G Strong, H Li and LL Brown (2002)
Neuroendocrinology Letters. 23 (suppl. 4):92-97

Scientists have described many physical and behavioral traits in avian and mammalian species that evolved to attract mates. But the brain mechanisms by which conspecifics become attracted to these traits i unknown This paper maintains that two aspects of mate choice evolved in tandem: 1) traits that evolved in the “display producer” to attract mates and, 2) corresponding neural mechanisms in the “display chooser” that enable them to become attracted to these display traits. Then it discusses our (in-progress) fMRI brain scanning project on human romantic attraction, what we believe is a developed form of “courtship attraction” common to avian and mammalian species as well as the primary neural mechanism underlying avian and mammalian mate choice. The paper hypothesizes that courtship attraction is associated with elevated levels of central dopamine and norepinephine and decreased levels of central serotonin in reward pathways of the brain. It also proposes that courtship attraction is part of a triune brain system for mating, reproduction and parenting.

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