Ever since the beginning of recorded history, humans have been trying to understand and explain the mysteries of love and sex. Over the past few decades, scientists started using specialized equipment to measure physical arousal by attaching devices to private parts. More recently, they’ve been observing the most important romantic organ in the human body—the brain.
Forbes wrote about the research of Andreas Bartels, Ph.D., at the Imperial College of London. Bartels used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, which can capture images of brain activity, to pinpoint the areas of the brain that are activated by love.
Bartles did a study of 17 people who were madly in love. He had the test subjects look at photos of platonic friends and of their loved ones while he observed activity in their brains. The resulting images clearly showed that certain sections of the brain are stimulated by love.
The scientist then did another study to observe the brains of mothers looking at their infants. The images showed that exactly the same areas of the brain were stimulated by maternal love, except for an area in the hypothalamus in the base of the brain that seems to be linked to sexual arousal.
The conclusion, therefore, is that specific areas of the brain light up at the prospect of love.
Bartels also noticed something else: When the test subjects were feeling love, certain areas of the brain were turned off. The scans showed that three regions of the brain generally associated with moral judgment go dim.
Chemistry of love
Then there’s the chemistry of love. Helen Fisher, Ph.D., a professor at Rutgers University, has written that three networks in the brain, and their associated neurotransmitters, are associated with love. They are:
- Lust—the craving for sexual gratification, which is linked to testosterone in both men and women.
- Romantic attraction—the elation and yearning of new love, which is linked to the natural stimulants dopamine and norepinephrine, and low activity in serotonin.
- Attachment—the calm emotional union with a long-term partner, which is linked to oxytocin and vasopressin.
Fisher also did a study using fMRI technology. She scanned the brains of 40 men and women who were wildly in love. When these people gazed at photos of their beloved, the scans showed increased activity in the areas of the brain that produce dopamine. This neurochemical is associated with feelings of excessive energy, elation, focused attention and motivation to win rewards.
Dopamine, by the way, is also the neurotransmitter associated with addiction.
Effects of arousal
Research has also proven what we’ve probably all experienced—sexual arousal can make us throw caution to the winds.
In another study using fMRI technology, Dr. Ken Maravilla of the University of Washington found that sexual arousal dims down the parts of the brain that control inhibition and, perhaps, moral judgment.
“These are things that keep you in line, and in arousal they may become less active, allowing you to become more aroused,” Maravilla said, as quoted by Wired Magazine.
In a paper called, The Heat of the Moment: The Effect on Sexual Arousal on Sexual Decision Making, Dan Ariely, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and George Lowenstein, of Carnegie Mellon University, documented that being sexually turned on affected the judgment of college-aged men. (Well, duh ”¦)
Specifically, Ariely and Lowenstein found that, “the increase in motivation to have sex produced by sexual arousal seems to decrease the relative importance of other considerations, such as behaving ethically toward a potential sexual partner or protecting oneself against unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease.”
But another of their findings was, “people seem to have only limited insight into the impact of sexual arousal on their own judgments and behavior.” In other words, most of us don’t appreciate how strong the sex urges are, and how they can make us do things that perhaps we shouldn’t be doing.
Sociopathic seduction
So let’s look at all this information in the context of our relationships with sociopaths.
Two of the main strategies that sociopaths use to snare us are love and sex. They emphatically proclaim their love and consciously seduce us into having sex. So what happens?
- Love causes specific areas of the brain light up, and at the same time, areas associated with morals and judgment go dim.
- The areas of the brain that produce dopamine become active, and dopamine is related to addiction.
- Sexual arousal dims the parts of the brain responsible for inhibition and judgment that might prevent us from making bad choices.
- We don’t recognize the impact that sexual urges have on our judgment and behavior.
Dr. Helen Fisher writes that the three primary brain systems associated with love evolved over the ages to play different roles in courtship, mating, reproduction and parenting. They are Nature’s way of ensuring the survival of the human species.
Sociopaths convincingly proclaim their enduring love and their sexual desire for us. Not realizing the pervasive deceit of these predators, we believe that they love us. We have sex with them, and the sex is great. Many Lovefraud readers have been amazed at the sociopath’s sexual appetite and prowess.
Therefore, sociopaths hijack our brain through our feelings of love and the bonds of sex. In their seductions, they turn the natural psychological and chemical functions of our brains against us.
Tilly
ok. so so sorry. And I did not mean YOU MarieLisa!! We have another lady on the site whose name is “Lisamarie” and she loves Elvis. I thought you were her! Please forgive me.
Tilly
Pianoman:
I had no idea you were so informed about all this! You are awesome! You are incredibly forgiving too…thankyou for forgiving me so quickly!xo
Tilly
Pianoman:
You are also SOOOO right about women having much more imagination than men!! We get into so much trouble because of it too!
xo
Jen2008
Tilly, If I am getting the right vibe from you I believe you intended your remark to Pianoman as sarcasm, however there actually is validity in Pianoman’s remarks about women and imagination and how our subconscious sometimes fills in the blanks about another person. You can find very similar remarks in some psych based articles.
Tilly
Jen2008:
Sorry jen, I would NEVER be sarcastic to pianoman! I TOTALLY believe that womens imaginations are a million times more imaginative than mens! That why they LIE so much!!!
Ox Drover
Everytime a “ringer” has shown up lately, they have been allowed to create chaos and a rucus–by us, because we respond to them. I am as “guilty” of this as anyone here on this site because it sets my teeth on edge when I detect that attitude.
Donna made a request today on several of the threads that when we detect a ringer we IGNORE THEM, and her advice is good, and guys, it is her site and she uses a great deal of energy to keep this site healthy, healing and supportive. I think we should respect that request and just stop discussing this situation. I think everyone here pretty well gets the idea of what is going on. NC, FOREVER!
I know there are a few newbies here that might not “get it” yet, but if things get out of hand, we should I think just notify donna ASAP and let her handle it! Some situations, even giving negative attention is more encouraging than no attention. If we stand united in NC then the situation ought to get very boring very fast. (((hugs)))) to my peeps here on LF
Tilly
And oxy cheered you for it!! Whodathuinkit?
Guess i won’t be getting any advice for myself here anymore!!
See yu Rosa!! YOU WERE AWESOME TODAY!! THANKYOU FOR EXPOSING “IT” AND SUPPORTING ME ALL THIS TIME!! LUV YU!
Tillyxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoxo
Tilly
Donna:
Again, please do not jump to conclusions about the motivations of other contributors. Overt abuse is not tolerated on this site. If the tone of someone’s comments bothers you, please simply ignore them.na:
My so called “abuse” was not “overt abuse”. It was discussion and benign opinion..especially my comments on steves article. you have no right to delete them and allow the other things (that are obviously by cluster bs) that you have on here. You are a control/power freak. I will be reading your book to see if any of my personal stories or others are in there. I can’t delete them like you have mine, but i can take action.
You can delete me and my comments.
blueskies
Everyone.
I owe Maria Lisa a BIG apology. I jumped to some pretty rubbish conclusions lastnight about her:(
I became very confused by the exchanges going on here. ML and P seemed to me lastnight to feed eachother, and I found P to be extremely arrogant off-hand an abusive but I guess I need to re-tune my signal. they showed up at the same time, as kathy pointed out and then later on there was this: ‘btw. excuse my english, im not american.’ then P asking where in Europe she was from and I couldnt find reference to her being from europe,or him being from america and being a BAD colombo I found that 2+2 = 24! Forgive me!
Confused, tired and hyper-vigilant. for me some of the activity on here over the last few days has me thrown.
I am also slightly paranoid, having read on another site a call to ‘flood our sh*t'(here on LF) by a sociopath woman hater and his pals(lulz) who also printed my user name.
Apologies EVERYONE!xxx
I hope that ML will now get the help and advice she needs and the welcome she deservesxx
I am VERY upset at Tilly feeling like she will no longer post here, but I totally understand how she feels. I think that it is awful.
I also understand Donna’s comments and As Oxy says, it’s generally better to ignore people who disturb us.
I guess the problem is that we are all at different levels of healing, different levels of understanding and some of us are still pretty raw, maybe not tooled up (YET) to deal with these things as gracefully as we’d like to think.
xxx
Tilly
Plus Donna is racist against Aussies sinse her P was one…maybe thats why she deleted my benign remarks, but sigh i guess no-one on here gives a ratz if there is a psychopath baiting vulnerable people, they just delete the ones trying to heal and let the psychopath go right on destroying everyone in ITS path. Then Jen2008 agrees with the psychopath and oxy cheers her on ( she has to, shes on donnas payroll).
Good luck with that