A recently published study “Six types of loves differentially recruit reward and social cognition brain areas” explores how different types of love activate different parts of the brain. Researchers found that various forms of love, such as romantic love, love for friends, love for pets and love for family, involve different brain regions. These areas are connected to either reward and pleasure or social thinking and understanding others’ emotions.
In simple terms, the study shows that our brains respond differently depending on the type of love we’re experiencing. Romantic love might light up areas linked to pleasure and reward, while love for a friend might involve parts of the brain that help us understand and connect with others emotionally. Each type of love has its own unique pattern in the brain, showing that love is more complex than just one simple feeling.
Parental love is the most intense and more intense that one’s love for a pet by Michael BroadHere are three quotes from the study:
Love in closer affiliative bonds was associated with significantly stronger and more widespread activation in the brain’s reward system than love for strangers, pets, or nature
Our results show that neural activity during a feeling of love depends on its object. Interpersonal love recruited social cognition brain areas in the temporoparietal junction and midline structures significantly more than love for pets or nature.
Romantic and parental love were the two highest rated categories in all seven dimensions. Of the other love types, love for strangers was rated to correspond least with the participants’ own understanding of what love is. Love for pets, love for strangers, and love for friends were the three most difficult categories to be immersed in during the imagery task.
Study findings
I’m thankful to Kaya Burgess, the Science Reporter at The Times for summarising the study and I’m also grateful to ChatGPT for the same. I have read the abstract of the study and skimmed it for some further details. The study citation is at the end of the article.
From a cat owner’s perspective, the finding is that in general terms, one’s love for one’s cat companion is less intense than one’s love for humans but of course it must depend upon the circumstances. I don’t think you can generalise actually. It may in fact be dangerous to generalise but in terms of pure brain activity as measured by an MRI scan, the intensity of the love between parent and child is the highest or most intense form of love and certainly higher than the love for one’s cat companion or indeed other people.
This might not surprise people. They concluded that the bond that parents have with their child is the most potent and all-consuming type of love. It trumps the feelings that we have for our partners, pets, nature or friends.
The researchers decided this by placing the participants in an MRI scanner while recordings were played of actors reading scenarios which were designed to prompt feelings of love. For example, the actor might say: “Your child runs to you joyfully on a sunny meadow. You smile together and the sunrays flicker on their face. You feel your love for your child.” Having read that the MRI scanner picked up activities in the brain. They found that six different regions of the brain are fired up with different kinds of love: for children, romantic partners, close friends, pets, strangers in need and nature.
The researchers from Finland wanted to find out using the scans how much activity was provoked in the brain when people experience these forms of love. Parental love for a child fired up the largest number of regions within the brain. In fact, it stimulated areas untouched by other forms of love.
The study is published in the journal Cerebral Cortex. One conclusion was that “Notably, during imagery of parental love, we found activation in [the] striatum and thalamus, this activation was not found for other types of love.”
The research was conducted in Finland at the Aalta University in Espoo. The lead researcher is Parttyli Rinne who said: “In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain’s reward system, in the striatum area, while imagining love, and this was not seen for any other kind of love.”
Fifty-five people were recruited for the study aged between 28-53. They had at least one child and 27 had pets.
As mentioned, parental love is the strongest followed by romantic love. Romantic love strongly activated parts of the brain related to “reward, attachment and motivation”. The third strongest form of love is one’s love of friends.
In respect of love for strangers in need, opinions diverged on whether this form of compassionate love for strangers is in fact a form of true love. It’s based upon many religions including Christianity which commands that one should love one’s neighbour.
The study found that “Love for strangers was rated to correspond least with the participants’ own understanding of what love is”.
Love of pets
The overall conclusion is that a love for your child, partner or friends activates the brain “significantly more than love for pets or nature”. The researchers added that “For love for pets, we found overall less activation than love for humans.”
As for love of nature it activated different regions of the brain “that were absent from interpersonal love”. It activated parts of the brain that were unrelated to social skills. This added to the knowledge that love is a very complex form of human nature.
Comment: the conclusion that a human’s love for another human is stronger than a human’s love for a companion animal, is, I would argue a generalisation. It applies, according to this study, for the 55 participants (and by implication generallly) but you will find specific instances of individuals who love their companion animals more than they love anything else. Perhaps it is unwise to generalise?
Citation
Pärttyli Rinne, Juha M Lahnakoski, Heini Saarimäki, Mikke Tavast, Mikko Sams, Linda Henriksson, Six types of loves differentially recruit reward and social cognition brain areas, Cerebral Cortex, Volume 34, Issue 8, August 2024, bhae331, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae331
More: Have you done something which reminds you that you dearly love your cat companion?
