Your Brain on Love

When you fall in love, your brain releases a cocktail of chemicals that profoundly change how you think, feel, and behave. Brain scans of people in the early stages of romantic love show strong activity in reward circuits that also respond to powerful rewards, including drugs like cocaine.

The primary chemical driver of early love is dopamine, the neurotransmitter of reward and motivation. When you see, hear, or think about the person you love, your brain's ventral tegmental area floods your reward circuits with dopamine.