ABSTRACT
Romantic love is the strongest of all positive emotions experienced by human beings. Attraction or romantic love is a much more complex beast to describe or understand. The attraction phase of love is motivated by the desire to possess the love and sexual fidelity of one special person; desire is centered and specific and has detoured from the lusty reptilian system to the emotional limbic system. Functional magnetic resonance image (MRI) studies have shown that attachment-mediating hormones activate regions in the brain's reward system specific to maternal and romantic love as well as overlapping into regions common to both. The neurons that synthesize and transport these chemicals also get a turbo-charged tune-up by nerve growth factor (NGF) at the dawn of love. Something as profoundly moving as the love experience necessarily involves multiple processes that recruit all the complexities of our brain structures and chemistry.
