Fearless journalism is more important than ever. When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters β and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today? What happens to your brain on love? What do we get wrong about male and female sexuality?
These are a few of the questions I put to Helen Fisher in a recent interview. Fisher is a biological anthropologist, the chief scientific adviser to the dating site Match. Fisher, in other words, has spent a lot of time thinking about the role of sex and love in human life.
So I reached out to her to find out what she has learned and how it undercuts a lot of our conventional ideas about sexuality and gender. I also wanted to know what distinguishes love from attachment, and why she thinks there are three simple things you can to do maintain a happy relationship. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.
What happens to our brains on love? We found that in almost all cases there was activity in a tiny little part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area or VTA.
It turns out that this brain system makes dopamine, which is a natural stimulant, and then sends that stimulant to many other brain regions. And the experience of love, at the level of the brain, is different from the experience of sex or from feelings of attachment? The sex drive is largely orchestrated by testosterone in both men and women, but romantic love is orchestrated by the dopamine system.
