What does love look like in the brain? | The Love Competition

Summary

The Love Competition, explored in this Aeon Video, delves into the neuroscience and personal experiences of love. Participants of various ages share their unique love stories while their brain activities are monitored. From the innocent affection of a child to the seasoned admiration of a long-married couple, the documentary showcases that love manifests differently in everyone. The exploration includes a deep dive into scientific pathways thought to be involved in romantic love and how these pathways converge on the Nucleus Accumbens, potentially indicating the intensity of love experienced by participants. Through this experiment, the video captures the complexity and variety of love, emphasizing its significance and multifaceted nature in human life.

Highlights

• Participants experienced different emotions and physiological responses when thinking about love. 💭
• The study highlighted key brain pathways involved in the feeling of love, such as dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 📊
• A young boy's innocent love for his baby cousin shows the purity of early emotions. 👶
• Older participants reflected deeply on lifelong love and the evolution of their relationships. 💑
• A contestant experienced a profound emotional release, feeling like they were glowing post-experiment. ✨

Key Takeaways

• Love varies greatly among individuals, from young to old, reflecting life's stages and experiences. 🧡
• Scientific research suggests that love involves specific pathways in the brain, including dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 🧠
• Despite the variations, love universally remains a compelling and essential part of human life. 🌍
• Participants exhibited personal growth and reflection through their experiences of love. 🌱
• The competition demonstrates that love can have both profound and blissful impacts on individuals. 🌟

Overview

The Love Competition offers a delightful glimpse into how love impacts our brains and emotions, revealing that love takes many forms across different stages of life. From the youthful innocence of a young boy expressing love for his baby cousin to the enduring bond of a couple married for fifty years, the tapestry of love is woven with diverse threads.

Scientific insights in the video shed light on the neurological underpinnings of love. Researchers track brain activity via scanning technology, focusing on key pathways like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin, which are consistently linked to varying experiences of love, from euphoric highs to profound, steady commitments.

Participants open up about their most cherished relationships, recounting stories of first loves, enduring marriages, and personal fulfillment. Whether it's the thrill of a new romance, the deep comfort of a long-term partnership, or contemplating love in solitude, The Love Competition encapsulates how love shapes our identities and enriches our lives.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction: Contestants and their stories This introduction chapter provides an overview of the contestants participating in the competition. Each contestant shares a brief personal story, their motivations for entering the contest, and what they hope to achieve. The chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by offering insights into the diverse backgrounds and unique perspectives of each participant.
• 03:00 - 07:00: Experiences of Love and Brain Scanning Procedure In this chapter, the narrator, Kent Pells, introduces himself as a 75-year-old resident from San Jose, California. The chapter likely delves into his experiences related to love and a brain scanning procedure, although specific details about these experiences are not provided in the given transcript.
• 07:00 - 11:00: Reflections on Love and Predictions In this chapter, the narrator reflects on their relationship with Marilyn Pells, whom they met and fell in love with in June 1961. The chapter provides insight into the narrator's feelings and experiences from that period.
• 11:00 - 13:40: Conclusion: Outcomes of Love Competition In the conclusion chapter titled 'Outcomes of Love Competition,' the narrative recounts a whirlwind romantic journey beginning with a blind date that swiftly leads to an engagement within three days. This intense romantic connection, underscored by immediate and profound feelings, although tempered over time in intensity, matures into a deeper respect and admiration for one another.

What does love look like in the brain? | The Love Competition Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30
• 00:30 - 01:00 My name is Kent Pells, and I'm from San Jose, California and I'm 75 years old.
• 01:00 - 01:30 Today I'm going to be loving Marilyn Pells, whom I met and fell in love with, the first week in June, in 1961.
• 01:30 - 02:00 We had a blind date, and three days later we were engaged to be married. We were so madly in love, there were just bells and whistles immediately when we first met. And I can still feel that feeling. And while that original intensity maybe has moderated, my respect and admiration for her has deepened.
• 02:00 - 02:30 So, the love has taken on a new definition as we've been together all these years. My name is Tiffany Chou, I am currently 23. I am from.. oh god! I'm from Palo Alto, California. I'll be thinking of all the cute, random, sweet things of my boyfriend. Producer: When was the moment when you first realized you were in love with him? He had sent me this "treasure box" and it was full of like these little tokens and mementos of our time together and I just kind of melted.
• 02:30 - 03:00 I'm going to focus on my ex-girlfriend, whose name is Tracy. And I dated her for a year and a half, and actually moved to another city to sort of live with her. We then ended up working together. And then when we broke up, we were still working together. I did that for about three weeks and then it was just too much.
• 03:00 - 03:30 Woman: Ok, you ready? Man: Do I have to take off my glasses? Woman: Yes... When you're in a relationship like that, it's kind of like experiencing a death when it's not around anymore. You do go through the stages of grief, I think, sometimes. I'm going to focus on the first 8 months of the relationship, when things were perfect. Doctor: It's actually really important to stay as still as absolutely still as possible. Because even just a little bit of head movement will actually swamp the signal that we're looking for.
• 03:30 - 04:00 My name is Morgan English, I'm 24 years-old from New York City. Doctor: This is just to determine whether you are okay to go into the scanner. So let's just check and make sure this is okay. Megan: I've been meditating on love. I don't think about a specific person, I don't think about a specific scenario. I focus on my lower gut and then I focus on my chest cavity, and then I focus on my mind. So sort of a truncated chakra meditation. Doctor: So it should be good.
• 04:00 - 04:30 Megan: Oh, that's so exciting! [Giggles] I don't think that I'm going to win. I don't really know what winning would look like, but I don't feel like I've ever actually been in love, so... I'm told that once you are in love you know it. And if I'm apprehensive than that means I've probably haven't ever felt it. I'll be actually talking to you the entire time, ok? So, we have the Dopamine pathway, the Serotonin pathway and the Oxytocin/Vasoppressim pathway.
• 04:30 - 05:00 Those are the proposed pathways that researchers think are involved in the experience of romantic love. And what's interesting, is that all of these pathways seem to be converging on the Nucleus Accumbens. So that's one of the regions that we're going to be looking at. It may be a primary indicator of how much love they're experiencing. It's amazing to sit here in this facility and measure brains all the time. And often, we're measuring things that can be a little boring. Love is something that everybody finds compelling and interesting. It's an important part of everyone's life.
• 05:00 - 05:30 Producer: Have you ever been in love? Don: Yes I have, many times. I can think of so many things that I've loved, that don't necessarily relate to romance, or lust, or whatever the wide variety of responses are that we attach the word "Love" to.
• 05:30 - 06:00 I find love unavoidable and continuous, and often coming from somewhere you don't expect. I love what Ramda said, Ramda says if you're in a relationship for the money, for the sex, for the companionship, for any of those reasons it's not going to last. You have to be in it for what he calls "to come to God together." Now I don't believe he means that means take the other person to church, I think it means to evolve together.
• 06:00 - 06:30 So to me, come to God means you're helping the other person to evolve into the person they're supposed to be and they're helping you evolve. I am Milo, I am 10 and I'm here for a love competition.
• 06:30 - 07:00 Love is like a feeling you have for someone that you have feelings about. I don't know, there's a lot of ways to explain it. Producer: Have you ever felt love? Milo: Hhmmm, not like crush love but I mean I have, but not crush love.
• 07:00 - 07:30 Producer: So who will you be loving today? Milo: Probably my little, baby cousin, Ingrid. Because she's my new cousin and she's very cute. Producer: Who do you think will win? Dr. Dougherty: I don't know, that's a good question. I mean, there's a nice age range. I might predict based on age, maybe one of the older guys.
• 07:30 - 08:00 Producer: You think? Doctor: Yeah, I think being an older guy myself, I think experience might matter. In the beginning of a relationship, the hormones are just going crazy. That could probably be a big factor. But, in this case you're trying to get people to control it, to some extent. Producer: So you think Kent or Don? Doctor: Yeah, yeah. Producer: Which one? Doctor: Don, that's my prediction.
• 08:00 - 08:30 So you can see, I'll do it on me Wow! No we're going to go into the scanner.
• 08:30 - 09:00 Tiffany: I'm pretty nervous. I think I'm going to run the risk of my brain sort of short circuiting. Morgan: I'm just going to be centering myself inside of my gut and trying to feel warm.
• 09:00 - 09:30 Milo: I'm just really happy to be here. This is like once in a lifetime experience. Doctor: What this is showing is that we're collecting a full signal throughout the entire scope of his brain. Every two seconds, for about five minutes. Okay, here we go.
• 09:30 - 10:00 Megan: I walked out and it felt like I was glowing.
• 10:00 - 10:30 I just felt like this surge of warmth and happiness and excitement, you know?
• 10:30 - 11:00 Producer: Really? Yeah! And it sort of just erupted out of me, you know? I can't explain it, I don't know what the hell just happened. Producer: So you think you did good? Megan:I think I actually did kind of good. It was profound, because I started thinking of all the ways I love.
• 11:00 - 11:30 And I isolated it into feeling protective, of like my children when they were born. And then I started thinking of being appreciated by others or honored in what I do. I felt like I was in outer space, in a really you know, trippy, wonderful way. I could've stayed in there for a long time. Well, I knew my heart rate was up, but it was only after the scan stopped I knew my head was also throbbing at the same time.
• 11:30 - 12:00 But not in like a dangerous "oh my god what's happening" way but like "oh okay." The feeling was more of sweetness, and how much fun it was. So, we've been blessed with a really lovely 50 year relationship. There wasn't any drama, we didn't have any big tragedies in our lives. So, it was more a feeling of wow that was a good trip. And how that shows up in my brain, I have no idea.
• 12:00 - 12:30 It felt like you guys were seeing some private things. Like you guys can't see what I'm thinking, but you can see the manifestation of that. Almost like you're seeing drawings, private drawings or something. When I was in there, I found it fascinating that I was kind of, I felt kind of over it. Producer: Whoa, really?! I felt like I was over it and it depleted my supply of love chemicals for that particular individual.
• 12:30 - 13:00 You can only think about a thing too much, you know. And I think I might be over that one, so. I think that was kind of the proof there. It was beautiful, yeah. It was beautiful, yeah. I feel very grateful, I just kept feeling how grateful I was for my life. How blessed I was for my life. I just feel like I've always been at the right place, at the right time when I needed to be there, you know?
• 13:00 - 13:30 Really grateful for that. I can't believe I picked a guy that for 50 years just allowed me to be who I am.