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LiveScience.com - Love More Powerful than Sex, Study Claims

LiveScience.com - Love More Powerful than Sex, Study Claims:


Sex and romance may seem inextricably linked, but the human brain clearly distinguishes between the two, according to a new study. The upshot: Love is the more powerful emotion.

The results of brain scans speak to longstanding questions of whether the pursuit of love and sex are different emotional endeavors or whether romance is just warmed over sexual arousal.

'Our findings show that the brain areas activated when someone looks at a photo of their beloved only partially overlap with the brain regions associated with sexual arousal,' said Arthur Aron of the State University of New York-Stony Brook. 'Sex and romantic love involve quite different brain systems.'

The study, announced today, will be detailed in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Left side, right side

The study was small, however, involving 17 young men and women, all of whom had recently fallen madly in love. They filled out questionnaires while their brains were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) system.

Romance seems to steep in parts of the brain that are rich in dopamine, a chemical known to affect emotions. These brain regions are also linked by other studies to the motivation for rewards.

'To our surprise, the activation regions associated with intense romantic love were mostly on the right side of the brain, while the activation regions associated with facial attractiveness were mostly on the left,' said Lucy Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine."
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