The Science of Attachment: Exploring the Reasons behind Love
Love is an emotional and psychological phenomenon that raises complex challenges to individuals in every culture and throughout history. From the flipping feeling in the stomach to overwhelming joy, love is often both thrilling and puzzling. In the previous years, there has been a growing interest amongst scholars and researchers in understanding the science of why we develop romantic relationships.
Falling in Love And Its Drugs
Chemical and biological processes are at the heart of all the various phenomena involved in falling in love, without which no one would be capable of reproducing this state as well. One such chemical messenger or neurotransmitter whose links to romantic love has been actively studied is dopamine. This is a substance, which plays a role in the feelings of enjoyment when a person is attracted to another person – the feeling associated with fall in early stages of wooing.
When we meet an interesting or a pleasing person, there is a spike in the Dopamine level, which elicits a high that comes with the early stages of falling in love. Additionally, there is another hormone called oxytocin that has an impact in enhancing closeness and relationships among people. Otherwise known as the ‘cuddle hormone” or ‘love hormone’ oxytocin is involved in promoting closeness and connection with others.
Evolutionary Perspective
Looking through the lens of Darwin's theory of natural selection, love as an emotion serves the purpose of ensuring the survival and reproduction of individuals. From the perspective of evolution, forming positive associations with one's mate enhances their ability to work together for the successful upbringing of young ones. This association serves not only as a guarantee for each other’s safety but also leads to increased parental care which is an essential component in the survival of the young ones.
For sure, choosing a partner based on traits such as love or intelligence can serve the purpose of signalling genotypic quality that is very much needed in the offspring helping to pass those particular traits looking from the evolutionary perspective.
Brain Imaging Studies
Neuroimaging techniques have both methods developed and perfected as a means of direct information collection concerning the state of being in love. For instance, studies leveraging functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) demonstrated that upon seeing one’s love picture or any other amazed ventral tegmental area (VTA) activating the reward memory network structure is engaged more.
Also, the activity of regions associated with the control of behavior and decision making, which is the prefrontal cortex, changes during the beginning phase of romantic relationship which can account for such feelings that are often referred to as obsessive or irrational when one is crazy about someone.
Conclusion
This is because love is a complex phenomenon that is multi-factored coupling a number of interplaying neurotransmitters, hormones, some evolutionary changes and brain wiring. Even though science is slowly unpacking the biological mechanisms that govern relationships, it would still be inappropriate to characterize love, as primarily a biochemical process.