Browsing by Subject "Rakkaus"

Romantic love is a diverse emotion, which evolves through time. It has fascinated human minds throughout our history. However, the neuroscience of romantic love has been studied for just under twenty years. The first study in the field was published by Bartels and Zeki in 2000. They described romantic love as an emotion consisting of cognitive, emotional, erotic and behavioural components. After that first study, there has been an increasing number of studies all over the world, and thus brain areas activated by love have become a bit more clear. Those areas include ventral tegmental area (VTA), cingulate cortex, striatum and its subareas, insula, cerebellum and different areas of the frontal cortex. The aim of this review is to paint a more elaborate picture of the activations found within those areas. The implications of the areas activated to love are also discussed whenever possible. Brain areas activated by love are also compared to the activations found in studies of maternal love and sexual desire. In the end, the limitations of previously conducted studies are discussed and possible trends for future studies of the neuroscience of romantic love are suggested.