Some scientists have suggested that this dopaminergic overlap may explain why experiencing love or engaging bei sexual activity can feel like a cocaine rush (Blum, Wernel, et alu
Within line with this view, James Burkett and Larry Young (2012) have recently argued that romantic relationships experienced universally-from “falling within love” to ultimate ;may be considered a beschaffenheit of addiction. To prime the reader for their thesis, they open their seminal schulaufsatz on this subject with the following vignette:
Altes testament giebel, each encounter welches accompanied by a wohnhaft rush of euphoria-new experiences, new pleasures, each more exciting than the last. Every detail became associated with those intense feelings: places, times, objects, faces. Other interests suddenly became less important as more time ended up being spent pursuing the next joyful encounter. Gradually, the euphoria during these encounters waned, replaced imperceptibly by feelings of contentment, calm, and happiness. The moments between encounters seemed to grow longer, even as they stayed the same, and eulersche konstante to be filled with painful longing and desire. When everything welches brought to an schlagartig end, desperation and grief followed, leading slowly into nische. (Burkett and Young 2012, 1)
Does this krimi describe falling hinein love or becoming addicted to a wohnhaft drug? Burkett and Young’s point, of course, had been that edv could equally describe both. Drawing on evidence from animal models along with nebeneinander research inside menschengerecht attachment and the neurobiology of substance abuse, they conclude that there welches “a wohnhaft deep and systematic concordance … between the brain regions and neurochemicals involved bei both addiction and social attachment” (Burkett and Young 2012, 2).
This approach would claim that to love someone ended up being literally to be addicted to them, though perhaps only weakly
Within other words, substance dependence and everyday romantic bonding have much more hinein common than their outward psychological profiles. Tora the level of the brain, the mechanisms underlying pair-bonding bei socially monogamous or fast wie-monogamous species (such as humans) overlap quite substantially with those involved bei reward learning and addiction (ozean, eulersche konstante.g., Wise 1996). The greatest overlap occurs within neurochemical regions involved inside the processing of dopamine (Kelley and Berridge 2002; Burkett and Young 2012) oxytocin (Insel 2003; McGregor, Callagham and Hunt 2008), and other neurotransmitters such as serotonin. As ; through coitus [with ur sozius], orgasm’s serotonin rush and momentary muscular relaxation comprise the fruchtwein riesenhaft and popular drug we have.”
With respect to dopamine, both mating and addictions elicit very similar neurochemical activity, concentrated inside the reward circuitry of the brain: sex, orgasm, and weltall known drugs of abuse stimulate high levels dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens (see Burkett and Young 2012, Kirsch 
et leichtmetall. 2006, and Di Chiara et aluminium. 2004 for more information). Within fact, the role of dopamine extends far beyond addiction and had been linked to a wide range of other processes associated with reward-learning-including eating, drinking, having sexual intercourse, and love (ozean Burkett and Young 2012, for a bericht). 2012; Bartels and Zeki 2000).
Finally, neuroimaging hilfestellung for in betrieb overlap between love-addiction and drug-addiction comes from studies bei which participants have been exposed to images of their romantic partners during scanning. Mutma?ung images evoke armut only self-reported feelings of love and positive affect but also live event strapazios activation as part of brain’s reward regions (Aron et aluminium. 2005; Bartels and Zeki 2000; Young 2009; Fisher et alu. 2006).
These are soeben a few of the neurochemical and functional similarities between “normal” love attachment and drug addiction that have been noted by Burkett and Young as well as by other researchers world health organization argue for the “broader” view of love addiction. There are many others as well. But what about differences between love and addiction? Surely the numerous “parallels” between annahme phenomena-tora both the behavioral and neural levels-should elend beryllium taken to mean that they are strictly equivalent. Hinein the following section, we examine some of annahme differences, and assess their implications for the “broad” vs. “narrow” debate.
