Love: it’s all the same to the brain
03 Feb 2011
There are no differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals or between women and men in terms of the brain systems regulating romantic love, according to new UCL research published in the latest issue of PLoS One.
The study, by Professor Semir Zeki and John Romaya from the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL, is a continuation of earlier work from the same lab which described brain activity in terms of romantic and maternal love.
In this latest study, 24 subjects were asked to view pictures of their romantic partners, as well as pictures of friends of the same sex as their partners but to whom they were romantically indifferent, while the activity in their brains was scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The subjects varied in age from 19 to 47, with their relationship lengths varying from 4 months to 23 years.
Half of the subjects were female (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual) and half were male (6 heterosexual and 6 homosexual). All reported being passionately in love and in a sexual relationship with their partner.
All of the study participants were asked to rate their feelings towards their romantic partners both before and after scanning and declare their sexual orientation on the Kinsey rating which includes groups ranging from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual.
