Scientists decided to find out how long ago living things began to experience romantic feelings for the opposite sex and which parts of the brain are responsible for love. Gazeta. Ru reports on the conclusions made by various scientists based on the research results.
Observing dolphins and primates, researchers have long noticed that the females of these animals, after the appearance of offspring, often refuse males to have repeated sexual intercourse. In females of many primate species, attachment to children arises at the cellular level and manifests itself from the first minutes after the birth of offspring. But this behavior of females provokes males to commit infanticide. Thus, a vicious circle is created: primates want to mate for the purpose of procreation, but they themselves do not allow their offspring to grow.
A team of researchers from University College London, led by biologist Christopher Opie, after studying primates for a long time, noticed that about a third of their species are monogamous. Experts have put forward the theory that partner consistency emerged as a natural process with the goal of ending infanticide. In an attempt to find confirmation of this, scientists have established that the assertion of monogamy began immediately after the termination of the extermination of offspring by males - about 20 million years ago. This discovery prompted Opie's team to believe that it was monogamy that contributed to the emergence of progress in evolutionary development.
Opie's team has shared the findings of the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But not everyone in the scientific community agreed with Opie's theory. For example, Oxford University researcher Robin Dunbar, who specializes in evolutionary psychology, tried to challenge it. In his opinion, attachment to one partner at an early stage of development in primates should have caused major changes in the brain. He believes that in this case, females and males should have become more aggressive, because of which they would see a potential rival in each representative of their species, as a result of which they would begin to exterminate each other.
But Christopher Opie disagrees with this assumption. He is convinced that it was the care of the first primates about their only partners and cubs that determined the future formation of humanity. The growth in the number of the primate family, in his opinion, required a more complex organization of life, and this forced the fathers of the families to pick up sticks and start working.
A neuroscientist from the University of California, Thomas Lewis, studied the most passive parts of the brain of people in love and found that some parts of the prefrontal cortex, namely those responsible for making rational decisions, are completely "turned off" during the period of love. People in love literally become insane, acting irrationally.
"People are not able to meaningfully assess the object of love and approach his personality critically," - explained Lewis.
Stephanie Cacioppo, a neuroscientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, studied MRI images of the brains of people in love and identified an area actively involved in the process of love. She found that the angular gyrus located at the back of the parietal lobe, which is considered a relatively late evolutionary acquisition, is responsible for romantic feelings. The angular gyrus is inherent exclusively in hominids, and it appeared about 5 million years ago. This part of the brain is involved in the formation of metaphors and allows people to operate with concepts in a figurative sense. Lovers often compare the eyes of their chosen one with the sky or bottomless lakes, and their hair with silks, and so all this is the result of the active work of the angular gyrus.
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The psychologist from the USA Lisa Diamond, based on the discovery of Cacioppo, described the phases of the development of love. First, a person develops a strong sex drive. With each touch of the object of desire, an active release of hormones into the blood occurs, which causes a state of physical euphoria. At such moments, the most active parts of the brain are the parts of the limbic system, which are directly connected to the site that transmits information about the received emotional experience.
The limbic system remains highly active, which triggers an increased release of dopamine and oxytocin, also known as the "hormone of love and fidelity." Neuroscientists are convinced that only the pleasure of sexual attraction that a person experiences can lead to the appearance of romantic feelings.
“Love grows out of desire. You cannot fall in love with someone you’ve never had sexual attraction to,”explains Diamond.
The limbic system, which plays a major role in all stages of love, is inherent in creatures that lived on our planet long before the appearance of primates. For example, ancient reptiles had it. Attachment to a partner, according to scientists, is formed by the oldest parts of the brain, and this statement is true for many different species of animals. It follows from this that in fact love has existed for several hundred million years. Under the influence of this feeling, the brain of living beings was improved, ensuring their evolutionary development.