Do you believe in love at first sight? As a true jaded millennial, I really don’t. Here’s the kicker though: science says I’m wrong. Science, people. Let’s explore.
We’ve all heard how it takes .2 seconds to fall in love and all, right? Turns out: there’s some truth to that. Back in 2010 an assistant neurology and psychology professor named Stephanie Ortigue (along with others) published a research paper that explores how your brain responds when falling in love.
Apparently, love is so much more than a basic emotion. According to Ortigue it exists along four dimensions: chemistry, cognition, preference / rewarding mechanisms, and an intention to be with a significant other. Obviously, this is only about passionate / romantic love. Reread those four dimensions for me, especially the last one, and let the true meaning of it sink in. That’s right, this would mean that falling in love actually means that you’re aware of being in love. She goes on to explain that love is a two-stage process, the first of which is subconscious. The second stage is where the actual falling in love then takes place.
Lust or Love at First Sight?
I hope you were able to follow this reasoning up until this point, because this is where it gets a bit more complicated. Ortigue differentiates between lust and love in the following manner: both states exist along dimensions, those same ones we mentioned before. Except that the last one (“the intention to be with a significant other”) does not exist in lust. Because if it’s just lust, why would you want to stick around after checking them off your to-do list, amirite? Anyway, lust, or desire, is defined as “the frequency and intensity of sexual thoughts and fantasies, either spontaneous or in response to erotic stimuli.” So with someone in particular in mind, obvs. So how does any of this involve science and your brain activity? This team of researchers measured brain activity through the use of fMRI and found that “both passion and sexual desire spark increased activity in the subcortical brain areas that are associated with euphoria, reward, and motivation, as well as in the cortical brain areas that are involved in self-representation and social cognition” (quote from the 2012 research). This means that for the most part, brain activity seemed to be the same for both passion and sexual desire. However, apparently, in the ventral striatum, hypothalamus, amygdala, somatosensory cortex, and IPL activity goes down when experiencing passionate love. Don’t worry, I looked up what that means so you don’t have to. If I understood it correctly, these parts of the brain have to do with the sense of reward and keep you very goal-oriented, which would explain why they’re more active in lust than in love. Like I said, checklists and stuff.
So far so good? Let’s move on.
What about the Tingles?
So where do these butterflies and other buggy feelings come from? Lots of psychological studies have already “confirmed” that love has a lot to do with the feeling of reward and motivation, which are parts in your brain that need to be activated. This in turn is connected to habit formation. The exact phrasing: “This specific pattern of activation suggests that love builds upon a neural circuit for emotions and pleasure, adding regions associated with reward expectancy, habit formation, and feature detection.” So if I’m reading this correctly, it just means that love can build up after certain events (like, gee, I don’t know, dates) and you kind of fall into a habit with this person? And then call it catching feelings? I know what you’re thinking: this can totally happen out of lust though, right? Yes. Yes it can. In fact, in the conclusion to their article, the team states that lust and love can be seen on a spectrum, where love actually grows out of the “pleasant sensorimotor experiences” that characterize desire.
Final Thoughts
My final thoughts? Still looks like love at first sight isn’t a real thing to me. I’ve had a “Ha, I could totally fall in love with you at some point maybe”-feeling, but actual love at first sight? Nah. But who knows, some people keep saying you won’t believe it until it happens to you. What do you think?
Wanna read more theories on how falling in love works? Check out our very own Tingles Theory.
