Researchers explored the neural activity elicited when individuals experience affection for romantic partners, children, friends, strangers, pets, and even nature. The study revealed distinct variations in the brain’s response to love, depending on the type of bond, highlighting the complex neural pathways activated by each form of affection.
A groundbreaking study recently published in Cerebral Cortex sheds light on how the human brain uniquely processes six different forms of love. Utilizing advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers explored the neural activity elicited when individuals experience affection for romantic partners, children, friends, strangers, pets, and even nature. The study revealed distinct variations in the brain’s response to love, depending on the type of bond, highlighting the complex neural pathways activated by each form of affection.
While previous studies have focused on the brain’s response to romantic and maternal love, primarily centered around brain regions associated with reward and attachment, this research breaks new ground by including lesser-studied forms of love. The goal was to examine whether all forms of love rely on shared neural foundations or activate distinct brain networks, depending on the object of affection. Love for friends, pets, or nature, for example, may involve entirely different neural circuits than romantic or parental love.
One of the key questions the researchers sought to answer was whether the intensity of love for various objects—such as friends versus strangers—correlates with specific brain activations. Understanding these neural variations could explain why some forms of love feel more powerful or emotionally charged, while advancing broader theories about human attachment and social bonds.
“My own background is in scriptwriting and philosophy, and I have been working on the concept of love for over a decade,” explained study author Pärttyli Rinne, a researcher at the Brain and Mind Laboratory at Aalto University. “I see love as one of the most significant human phenomena both personally and culturally. Yet, love is an understudied topic within the scientific community. Considering the ubiquity of negative social phenomena like hatred, violence, and wars, love is also still poorly understood by the global human community.”
In this illuminating study, 55 healthy adults—comprising 29 women and 26 men, aged between 28 and 53—participated. All were in loving relationships, had children, and 27 of them were pet owners. These participants were exposed to a series of brief, pre-recorded audio narratives that evoked feelings of love for romantic partners, children, friends, strangers, pets, and nature. The stories culminated in emotional statements like, “You feel love for your child,” or “You love nature.” For comparison, neutral stories about mundane tasks, like sitting on a bus, were included to evoke minimal emotional response.
As the participants listened, their brain activity was monitored using fMRI to track blood flow changes, giving the researchers insight into which areas of the brain became active during specific emotions. After each narrative, participants were asked to mentally immerse themselves in the feelings that the stories triggered, allowing the team to observe brain activity both during storytelling and emotional reflection.
Behavioral data was also collected, asking participants to rate the intensity of the emotions they felt, providing valuable correlations between subjective emotional experiences and observed neural responses.
“We use state-of-the-art technology to measure what happens in the brain when a person feels love,” said Rinne in an interview with PsyPost. “We studied many different types of love and were able to show how different types of love activate the brain in different ways. Our results help explain why the word ‘love’ is used in so many different contexts. Our research also offers insights into why we feel stronger affection for those we are close to compared to strangers, even though the underlying brain processes of affection are the same for all types of interpersonal relationships.”
The study found that different types of love activate both shared and unique areas of the brain. Broadly, all forms of love engaged regions associated with social cognition, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and the precuneus. These regions are linked to understanding others' thoughts and emotions, a process known as theory of mind. Intriguingly, even love for non-human entities, like nature, still triggered these neural pathways.
However, the strength and extent of activation varied significantly depending on the type of love. Romantic and parental love prompted the most widespread and intense brain activity, particularly in areas connected to the brain’s reward system, including the striatum and thalamus. These regions are responsible for pleasure, motivation, and reinforcement. The activation also reached subcortical regions such as the brainstem, which govern emotional regulation and bodily arousal, explaining the heightened emotional intensity of these bonds.
In contrast, love for friends and strangers elicited less activation, particularly in reward-related regions, though areas involved in social cognition were still engaged. Love for strangers showed the weakest activation, aligning with participants' reports that affection for strangers felt less intense, arousing, or pleasurable. Instead, it engaged brain areas linked to empathy and altruism, suggesting that love for strangers is more akin to compassion than deep emotional attachment.
The study uncovered a fascinating pattern in pet owners, whose love for their pets activated brain regions associated with emotion processing, empathy, and social cognition in ways similar to interpersonal love. This suggests that, for pet owners, the experience of love for animals closely resembles love for humans.
“I was personally surprised that all the interpersonal love types—romantic, parental, friendship, even for strangers—activate such similar brain areas,” Rinne noted. “The difference is mainly in the strength of activation, especially in the reward system of the brain, such that closer affiliations activate the reward system more intensely.”
Love for nature, on the other hand, engaged different neural pathways, specifically in regions associated with visual and spatial processing, such as the parahippocampal gyrus, highlighting a more sensory and aesthetic experience rather than an emotional or social one. This reinforces the idea that love for nature is fundamentally distinct from love for living beings.
Despite these limitations, the study provides invaluable insights into how love, one of humanity’s most cherished emotions, manifests in the brain. Future research, as the authors suggest, will delve into cross-cultural variations of love, helping to further decode its neural complexities across different human experiences and societies.