Science behind Love and Grief - Podcast with Robin May

This episode of the Gresham College Podcast features an interview with Robin May, hosted by Jeoffrey Sarpong. Professor Robin May is a Professor of Infectious Disease at the University of Birmingham, and (interim) Chief Scientist at the UK Health Security Agency.

We cover what's actually happening in your brain when you lose someone, why grief is hardwired from childhood, whether animals grieve, and what ancient burial sites tell us about human emotion 78,000 years ago. Then we shift to love — the physical symptoms of infatuation, why your amygdala shuts down around a new partner, why the honeymoon phase lasts 12–18 months, and why heartbreak can literally feel like withdrawal.
Plus: audience questions on anxiety and love, chatbot grief, abusive relationships, and whether oxytocin is really a "love drug."

Watch Robin's Gresham College lectures here: 

https://youtu.be/5Yrf8IBn9gk
https://youtu.be/5uQWglAwlps

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Grief in adults is a sort of inadvertent carryover of the very big benefit of grief in childhood. What is actually happening in the brain when we agree with it? There is a particular area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens that seems to be hyperactive in people experiencing prolonged grief. For people who struggle with interpreting other people's emotions, say people who are on the autism spectral, for example, love is a minefield. Now, if you think it first hand about love, classical love in adults, it doesn't make much evolutionary sense. This is not itself evolutionarily selected for, but is the consequence of things that are incredibly beneficial in early age. What is happening in the brain when we're in love? Evolution is not actually rewarding us for love, it's rewarding us for the prospect of reproducing. For those of you listening to us who are in the first flush of youthful love, I'm afraid it won't last forever.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Professor May is our professor of physics, and he was doing a really interesting series of lectures on emotions. We sit down today to discuss some of the ideas and topics that he mentioned in his lectures, as well as some of the questions that you guys didn't get to ask during the lecture. So stay tuned and enjoy. So, Professor Robin May, in your lecture, you mentioned a quote by Tennyson. It goes, Let love clasp grief, let's both be drowned. Let darkness keep a raving gloss. Ah, sweeter to be drunk of loss, to dance with death to beat the ground. I love that quote. But I think to me, it kind of simplifies how universal grief is. So, how do you define grief and why does it seem so universal amongst cultures?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah, I think uh I mean that's a really nice bit of poetry to kind of uh encapsulate what's quite a scientific idea, really, right? So um so in in principle, grief, grief is quite hard to define, but broadly speaking, psychologists and and clinical professionals um define it as the the intense sadness, the intense feeling of loss that is associated with the loss of something that won't come back. And that is the big difference, I think. Uh we don't grieve over missing a bus, for example. We might be annoyed about it, but we don't grieve because another bus is going to come along, but we do grieve over, particularly over bereavement when you know a loved one dies. But it can be over the loss of a thing, you know, uh a your wedding ring, for example, can really stimulate that feeling of uh loss, uh an irretrievable loss, really.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

And I think grief is also interesting because you can still understand it even if you haven't experienced it. What does that also tell us about what grief is?

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah, I think that's very interesting. Even very small children, if they are watching a film, for example, you might know those listening to this who've got small children themselves might have watched a you know a Disney film and you know somebody dies. And very small children feel that. They feel that kind of grief, even though fortunately most very small children haven't experienced loss themselves. And that I think tells us something quite important. This is a very hardwired emotion that's there for an evolutionary reason. And the evolutionary reason is most of us are very, very reliant on other people, particularly if you're a small child, for our survival. And so the loss of someone who is close to us is not just emotionally sad, but it's existentially dangerous, and certainly was so until our kind of modern society stepped in with a social welfare, for example.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Can you go further on that evolutionary reason then? Why do you think we develop this capacity?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

It's an interesting question about why we've developed it, and particularly, I think, why it remains. So if you think about grief in uh you know in adults, in many ways it's sort of maladaptive, it's not very sensible, right? Uh, particularly very prolonged grief. Often people uh withdraw from society, they sometimes lose appetite, don't eat, they don't look after themselves. Uh so you might imagine these are all things that over evolutionary time would have been weeded out, which is not clearly it's not sensible to not eat if eaters if food is available. So why do we grieve? Uh, I think one of the most compelling reasons to explain that is that this is uh grief in adults is a sort of inadvertent carryover of the very big benefit of grief in childhood. Um, and if you think about that, so small children are not capable of looking after themselves, so they are completely dependent on others, primarily adults or at least older children. So they need a way to signal when they need something, and as we all know, they signal it by crying and wailing and making, you know, uh being very sad. Um they do that particularly strongly if they feel there is a risk of something important being lost. So, you know, mums and dads listening to this will have experience I've had, you know, you leave your child a nursery, for example, and they really, really kick off because, of course, they're too young to understand you'll come back. Um, and so they are precipitating that kind of feeling of grief, and it's triggering all these physiological effects like tears and crying and so on and so forth, in order to try and bring back that person that's very important to them. Uh, and so one of the reasons that we think that we still grieve as adults is that we can't, that's a very powerful emotion, and you can't switch it off again. So it's really useful as a child to call back your parents or your, you know, whoever's looking after you. Um, and uh there is no sort of evolutionary advantage really in then switching it off as an adult. You know, for most of the time, it's not hugely damaging to our survival as an adult to grieve, and therefore that system has kind of remained active in us even you know into our late old age.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

And then looking across species, then do animals also grieve and how do they grieve differently or similarly to human beings?

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah, this is a really interesting field, uh and one where obviously it's it's quite difficult to interpret. We can't ask a dolphin or a chimp if they're experiencing the same thing that a human is. Um, but there is really quite strong evidence for uh grief, particularly in animals that we think have quite high brain function. So uh one example is chimpanzees, our closest relatives. So chimpanzee uh mothers in particular, if their infant dies, uh, will often carry the dead infant around for quite a prolonged period of time. Uh they will sometimes stop eating and withdraw socially from the rest of the group, um, doing things that are very familiar to humans. And I guess in some senses it's not surprising that our closest relatives probably experience grief. Uh, what I think is more interesting is animals that we think of as being very distant to ourselves also show signs of grief. Um, and it's particularly in animals that have complex brain function and higher social structures. Uh, so orcas, killer whales, as we used to call them, um, are quite a good example of a very intelligent species. They they work and coordinate and live together as groups, they hunt together and they rely on each other. And orca has also been documented to experience what looks like the equivalent of grief. So carrying around dead infants after they've died for a pretty long period of time, uh, changing their behavior with the loss of a troop member. Um, and and so I think there's probably quite good evidence that animals that rely on deep thinking, social interaction, close cohesion probably also experience grief.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

I read somewhere around 78,000 years ago that you know we started um this um the ritual burials. Can you talk to me about that? Where did that came from? Why do you think it was adapted amongst our kind of um primates or back then?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Yeah, so burial is a very interesting uh and I have to say highly controversial uh topic into kind of human behavior. So you're right that the the earliest evidence we have of burials is about 78, 80,000 years ago. Um, so suggesting this is something that has evolved with relatively modern human culture. Um, so so modern humans, uh Homo sapiens, uh, you know, it's not much older than that. Um, there is a little bit of discussion around whether Neanderthals also buried uh their dead, um, and that's I think it's still to be resolved. Uh, but certainly there's no evidence of earlier pre-human species like yeah, Ardipithecus or something burying their dead. That said, of course, there are not very many fossils, so you know it's possible we're just missing a point. However, so yeah, so if we if we take burial as being something that's evolved sort of 70 or 000 years ago, the question then becomes why why do we bury people at all? Um, one argument is it could just be a kind of protective hygienic thing. You know, if someone's died of an infectious disease, you don't really want them lying around next to your food. Um, you know, burying them is not a bad idea. I think that to me, that kind of surmises a bit too much detailed understanding from uh, you know, ancestral humans. You know, our understanding of uh pathogens causing disease is is only a couple of hundred years old. Um it would be quite a big leap, I think, people 70,000 years ago to think that. So I think more likely is that this is a kind of cultural uh thing that has somehow developed as a way to recognize the loss of that person. Um and the fact that that we buried people suggests quite a complex brain process, right? It means that we are in we are first of all realizing that the person's dead and not alive, and that it's somehow fundamentally different. We're endowing that dead body with some kind of feeling because you want to kind of treat it nicely and so on and so forth. Uh, and it might suggest also that people had an idea about things like the possible existence of an afterlife or these kinds of things, all of which is you know, obviously very debatable. Um, but what I think it does suggest is that, you know, by 70 or 80,000 years ago, people uh were responding to the loss of family members or other relatives uh in a way that is probably about grieving. You know, we don't get too worried about burying people who we don't know at all or we have no feelings for. We bury people who we are close to because we're grieving them. And so I think it's a reasonable supposition to think that you know those early burials represent kind of the start of clear, elaborate, modern human grieving in those people.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

And then moving from kind of social and cultural to kind of more neurological, um, what is actually happening in the brain when we're grieving or going through that process of grieving?

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Yeah, that's a very that's a very kind of detailed and difficult question. So uh several, if you look in the brain of people who are experiencing grief, um, so typically this is studies done in people who've been recently bereaved, for example, uh, what we see are several areas of the brain lighting up. Um, and two areas in particular are lighting up. One is your areas that are associated with strong emotion, uh, similar areas that light up, for example, during experiences of of love. Um areas light up that are to do with reward and and yearning. So the same areas that, for example, light up to uh encourage you to eat when you're hungry are also lighting up there. And and very interestingly, the other area of the brain that lights up is the same area that lights up when you have experience of physical pain. Uh, so it's uh aversive area, it's an area that's saying to your body, this is really unpleasant, don't do this. Um, and actually that explains, I think, uh, why many people refer to grief as being very physical. They talk about, you know, actual pain in their heart, uh, actual kind of stomach pains. Um, and so there is this link between kind of physical pain and emotional pain associated with grief.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

And then what about um kind of prolonged grief or complicated grief? How does that um differ neurologically?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah, very this is a difficult area, I think, because grief is such a personal thing. You know, some people uh grieve for a couple of weeks and then they move on with their lives. Other people, you know, feel grief, uh the loss of a loved one for a very long period of time. And I think it's very difficult uh as an outsider to judge what is normal and reasonable versus what is uh unacceptable. Um, but you're right, the psychologists talk about this thing called prolonged grief, which is defined as a grief period that goes sort of beyond what is healthy if such a thing exists. Um, and there are you know some people out there who really can't break free of grief for many years, for example, after the loss of a partner. Um and uh so there are there are lots of challenges there. Uh there is a particular area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens that seems to be hyperactive in people experiencing prolonged grief. Um, and that area is is one of those areas I talked about earlier about being linked with yearning and desire and a reward. Um and so one idea is that people experiencing prolonged grief are kind of locked into this sense of seeking the thing they can't have anymore, the the person who's died, for example, uh looking for that reward, almost a little bit like a kind of, you know, someone who's substance addicted and can't get their alcohol or their hit of drug, uh, you know, they're kind of looking for that. Um actually, in some ways, that is uh sort of understanding that is kind of good news because it means it opens the door to thinking about ways we might help those people and potential therapy. So, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy that's used quite extensively in substance abuse and addiction, um, has shown some promise in helping people who are experiencing prolonged grief uh recover some sense of normal life.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

And across the the body more broadly, I know that grief has been seen to, you know, have higher cortisol spikes, you know, kind of immune system difficulties and even you know cardiovascular effects. Um, what are some of the kind of like the effects of the on the body when you know someone goes through grief?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah, so unfortunately, uh given that many of us will experience grief in our in our lives, um, it's actually pretty bad for us. Uh so you know, clearly the first thing that happens during uh bereavement, especially an unexpected bereavement, is your stress levels rocket. Um, so you're producing much more cortisol, for example, a stress hormone. You know, for a short period of time, that's not a bad thing. We've evolved to produce cortisol and a stress response because it's there to protect us against a threat, for example. But clearly, in a grieving situation, this is not about protecting. You can't change the situation. So, so actually, that prolonged stress hormone is not good for you. Um, it has a number of effects. Uh, one, as you mentioned, is on kind of blood pressure and heart rate. So, elevated blood pressure, elevated heart rate for an extended period of time, which is which is not healthy, disrupted sleep patterns, um, anxiety, you know, mental health issues on the back of it. Um, and and perhaps as a result of those changes and many others, uh, unfortunately, people who've been bereaved show significantly increased mortality over those who haven't, um, particularly in the first year after bereavement, after the loss of a partner, for example. Um, and if you look at what it is that actually kills people who are who are grieving, uh, the dominant killer is actually cardiovascular problems or heart attacks, for instance. And so uh so it is true uh in a horrible sort of way that you can actually die of a broken heart uh because you are your heart is under enormous pressure afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

And what do we know about people who find it difficult to grieve or people who see, you know, kind of um don't grieve? You know, is that a sign of resilience or is that something else happening there?

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, again, a very difficult area because obviously, you know, grief is a very personal thing, it's also a very cultural thing, different cultures grieve in different ways. Uh, you know, there are some uh places where people grief is a very public thing, people you know beat themselves and wail and they're very demonstrative about it. There are other cultures where people are very much, you know, retreat from society. Um so there is no really good documented evidence of people who genuinely cannot grieve. And actually, there's a bit of it. So people talk about uh, for example, uh people who have psychopathic traits uh as being lacking emotion, and that's definitely true. If you're psychopathic, you you lack emotional sensitivity towards others, and that for that reason, some psychopaths do terrible things to other people, but even people with very pronounced psychopathy still experience grief of someone that they were close to, and so uh so there's no uh you know, sort of center for grief that just can be lost. Um, there are no examples of people who you know have strokes then suddenly can't grieve because they've lost a part of the brain. Um and that I think kind of attests the fact that grief is a really complex emotion using lots of the brain areas, so so there's not a grief center that might be damaged, for example. Um uh and you know, I guess maybe that's a good thing that you know there aren't people out there who are just totally unable to grieve, even if we vary in our in the way we show it.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

And um, how do we help people grieve? You know, what tends to work well? You mentioned CBT, but uh what does a healthy grieving process look like? I know it's obviously different for different people, but what would you suggest for people?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, again, a very personal thing, I think. I mean, there are people out there who are enormously helped by uh you know having other others around them, by talking about the person who's been lost uh by uh uh you know crying with others. Uh there are other people out there who, you know, that's that's the worst possible thing in the world. They just want to be left alone. I think you know, if your friends, family, etc., are grieving, I think you need to be very much guided by their, you know, what you know of them and their kind of response to things. Um I think there are there are certainly things that can help. And one is is taking it seriously. So I think you know, uh people who are grieving for a prolonged period of time, uh, you know, especially if it might be over something that you personally don't feel that significant about. So, you know, my goldfish died 12 months ago, you know, many people would say, not sure that's a big issue. But if for you, as the person who's bereaved, you feel the grief, it's real for you. So I think a very important point is that, you know, you can't judge another's emotions by your own. You need to be kind of listening and supportive, sort of non-judgmentally. Um, and then I think, you know, if you are worried about someone who's got very prolonged grief and it's causing them, you know, for instance, health issues, they're not eating properly, et cetera. Um, there are really good ways to see help out there. Uh, lots of stuff available on on uh online. Uh and I know there are links on our website, for example, you can look to. Um, and and people you can reach out to to try to help you with that. So don't fear you're on your own.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

And on that point, actually, there's something there's something really interesting happening right now with AI companions and digital kind of relationship. We're kind of seeing how they also experience grief when the chatbots are kind of taken offline. You know, I think the, you know, the Tamangotchi effect you called it in the in your lecture. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What is this what do we know about that kind of new development?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yeah, so I think one of the things we've known for a long time before, you know, even computers, is that people can become very emotionally attached to things that aren't alive, right? Or uh, you know, and they are definitely alive, but people become very attached to their pets, uh, but they also become quite attached to things like childhood teddy bears, personal souvenirs, mementos, things that are associated with people they love. Um, and we've known for a long time that the loss of those things can cause kind of grief-like uh symptoms. What is very interesting in recent decades is of course the rise of, as you say, AI and and kind of computational things that provide companionship. And the the Tamagotchi that we talk about in the lecture, uh, for those for those who are not old enough to remember Tamagotchi was a very early kind of little thing that you could get in your pocket and it and it uh it was digital, but it kind of hatched in inverted commas, and you had to look after it and feed it, and you know, and then if the battery died, it was gone. Um, and people documented, psychologists documented at the time, uh, people's feelings of grief when their Tamagotchi died. What we're seeing now in the 21st century, of course, is a much more extensive version app that comes with the much more realistic AI uh interactions that people have, and chatbots in particular. Um, people often construct themselves friends, partners even in the digital world, um, and have quite intense relationships with them. Uh, and then they they they die in inverted commas. Uh, they might die because the person's kind of killed them, turned off, not logged in, but they also might die inadvertently. The company goes bust or the server goes down or something. Um, and what we see is that people who have extensive relationships with chatbots experience grief that is actually very, very similar to the to the real death of a real person. Um, and I think as we move forwards uh with this technology, which I'm sure we will, we think quite seriously about how we handle that. Because at the moment, you know, chatbots are two-dimensional computer-based things. Very soon they'll be integrated into three-dimensional robots, those robots will become very realistic. You know, the stuff that was science fiction about having your, you know, boyfriend or girlfriend is actually a kind of robot at home, is I think quite a realistic prospect. And it raises all sorts of questions. How will we help those people about, you know, have emotional interactions with something that's not really alive? Um, what do we engineer into the AI or not to make it kind of more or less uh realistic? Um, and and what's our sort of rights and responsibilities around interacting with something that we have kind of created? There's a whole world of challenging ethics out there.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

And I'm sure we're going to be tackling a lot of those kind of uh questions here at Gresham. Um during your lecture, we had some questions at the end that didn't get to ask. I'll like to take an opportunity now to ask some of them. Someone asks, is there a link between attachment theory and how we grieve?

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Uh yes, there is. So attachment theory, for those not familiar with it, is this idea that human infants are vulnerable and require support for a very prolonged period of time, several years, right? Human infants before they can actually look after themselves. And uh, so they're entirely dependent on others to look after them, usually they're parents. Um, that means that there must be a biological mechanism to attach, hence the phrase the parent to the child. And those of us who are parents really know that this very strong emotional bonding that makes you, you know, drop everything to look after your child. Um, the idea is that that without that attachment, parents would desert their children all the time and their children would die. And therefore, it's evolutionarily important for that attachment to be very, very strong. A consequence of that is that when the attachment is broken, you have a very strong grief process. And obviously, you know, the loss of a child uh is an absolute tragedy that that you know, those unfortunate enough to experience it really, you know, it's probably the most intense grief you can possibly have. Um, and so I think there is a very close link between the kind of tighter the emotional bond, the kind of more intense kind of love feeling you have for that uh that other person, the more of a wrench the grief will be when it comes.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Another question arks does empathy and grief share the same evolutionary drivers?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Uh to some extent it does, yeah. So empathy is your ability to uh experience the emotions of another, right? Um, and uh it's you know it's something that humans have in spades, um, we think that other animals have to some extent, uh, and it's kind of very important for human society. In terms of grief, we know, for instance, that very small children experience grief on behalf of others, so they are empathizing. So um, you know, two or three year olds, for example, if uh you know uh a classmate has uh the loss of a grandparent, the child that's not lost the grandparent understands that and they feel sad for that child. So there is absolutely Important role for empathy in in grieving, I think. And I think that ability to sort of translate others' emotions into yourselves is sort of fundamental to what makes human society work.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

I think um, and to move from grief to love, then you know, as tennis and sending in the in the same poem, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. So, um, what are the first signs physically and psychologically that someone has fallen in love? What does the symptoms of love kind of look like?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yeah, this is a much happier topic. I'm glad we moved on to that. Um, so uh so so so love, and I yeah, I think we're just to be clear, we're talking about romantic love here, right? We're not talking about, you know, um uh you know, I love my mum or these kind of things. We're talking about the passionate love of your life, or possibly the love of just three lights, whatever. But anyway, um uh so what are the symptoms of love? So I think many of us will will recognise these. Uh first one clearly is that kind of physical infatuation, usually for most people. Really characteristic early on in a in your kind of romantic relationship is this idea of hyper-vigilance, this idea that you have eyes only for the person that you are developing love for, um, and that you go beyond what is perhaps logical uh in order to cement that relationship with them. So, for instance, uh, you know, teenagers in any relationship will travel for miles in the bus. They will um, you know, neglect their other friends, uh, they will do all sorts of things that are they're doing to now focus on this new partner. It doesn't have to be just teenagers, by the way. You know, old people do this too. Um, so love is uh is a very powerful emotion of overcoming actually what would otherwise be quite quite logical. In parallel with that, you have actually some quite strong physiological uh effects. So uh people will be familiar with this idea, you know, your heart rate goes up, you get this beating heart, um, you get uh elevated blood pressure, you might break out into a sweat, or is slightly inappropriate if you're trying to meet a new partner. Um, uh, you get angst feelings of anxiety. And actually, one of the interesting ones is people often talk about having butterflies in their stomach. And that's real, that's because your brain is uh processing this kind of stress uh response, the kind of oh my goodness, do they still like me response? Um, and one of the effects that has is to change the peristalsis, to change the gut contractions we have. And so so you when you think, oh, I couldn't eat anything because my stomach is turning upside down, that is genuinely true. Your stomach really is behaving bizarrely because you're in love.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

You mentioned all these kind of kind of like physical responses and you know, uh increased heart rate and and such and such. Is then love kind of like a stress response? How close is it to stress and how does it define and or differ?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Yeah, so just like grief and and fear and some of these other things, uh, love does trigger a stress response. So you produce this uh cortisol, elevated cortis levels, but unlike some of those other emotions, uh it's not consistent. So what we often see in people who fall in love is, you know, hugely variable levels of cortisol goes up, goes down. And that sort of makes sense, you know, if you think about it in any new relationship, there is quite a lot of stress. Do they still like me? Do I still like them? Will they be there for my date? Uh, you know, someone will my parents like them, whatever it is. Um, but there's also a very strong feeling of contentment, obviously. So, you know, will they still be there? Oh, yes, they're here for the date. Great, we're getting on well. You know, your stress levels fall then, and then you know your date ends and you go home again and they go back up because you think, maybe they'll never speak to me again. Uh, so it's quite a stressful process. And of course, over time, hopefully, if the relationship develops, that dwindles quite rapidly into kind of more of a feeling of contentment.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Okay, then because I feel like a lot of um my generation will have often struggle with that kind of balance between the anxiety they feel and love. Um, is that is that does that tend to happen because of the emotions that you're just talking about tends to come up?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Yeah, I think you can't avoid the anxiety. I mean, I guess I might argue that you know, if you have a new relationship and you don't feel at all anxious about it, then maybe it's not the right relationship for you. Uh, you know, you have to value things, right? Um, so I think there's you know, clearly if it's going on for a very prolonged period of time, uh, you know, that's not particularly healthy. And I guess the other thing we should probably mention here is, you know, there are, as we all know, very sadly, um, very damaging relationships, you know, people locked in abusive relationships, these kind of things. So, so you know, if you're experiencing uh ongoing stress because you know your partner is violent, uh, you know, you should definitely seek help about that.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

And then now looking at the brain again on love, uh, what is happening in the brain when we're in love? You know, specifically, how does it affect the amygdala or our reward systems? How does that kind of play play a part there?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah, uh, so um it plays havoc with your brain, unsurprisingly. Uh so it does two things really. So, one of the things it does is uh, as you mentioned, the reward system is it's quite good at activating that. So, you know, love is a is a strong reward in its own right, and that's such an interesting thing. And of course, you know, if we really boil it down biologically, it's not actually evolution is not actually rewarding us for love, it's rewarding us for the prospect of reproducing. But nonetheless, it says activating your reward areas um quite strongly. At the same time, it is suppressing the amygdala, which you mentioned, which is the center of the brain that rely that that regulates fear responses. So your amygdala normally is the first part of the brain to respond when something is a threat. So someone coming at you with a knife or a bang in the night. You essentially you can't have that amygdala activated normally whilst you're in a relationship, a new relationship, because by definition, you are putting yourself in a risky environment. This is someone you don't know that well, you're physically very close to them, often alone. There are lots of reasons why this objectively is a dangerous thing to do. But if your amygdala was telling you to panic and run away the whole time, you wouldn't have much of a relationship. So the brain deliberately suppresses those fear responses, which is really important to start off that relationship. You've got to be able to, you know, form a bond. Um, it does also unfortunately mean that, you know, uh judgment, particularly judgment of fearful things, is often impaired early on in a relationship. And that's you know, one of the reasons why people sometimes, you know, form relationships with partners who are inappropriate because their sort of judgment centre has been slightly suspended.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

People often talk about the honeymoon phase of a relationship where everything's just brilliant and it's all amazing. Is there a biological reason why that fades around 12 to 18 months?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Yeah, yeah, it's slightly depressing, isn't it? So, you know, for those of you listening to this who are in the first flush of youthful love, I'm afraid it won't last forever. Um so, so on average, as you say, 12 to 18 months after that initial interaction is when um those very intense feelings of love generally for most people start to dwindle. And by three years in, most of us are not experiencing that same thing. And we and that's measured by that kind of infatuation hyper-vigilance part. So by three years in, you know, most of us are not counting the hours until we see our partner anymore. Um, we sort of like seeing them, hopefully, uh, but we're not quite as obsessive about them. Uh at which point you start to mature into a kind of relationship that that is much more based on kind of companionship and mutual support. And it's quite interesting if you talk to if you interview people who are in a new relationship, you know, they talk a lot about things like passion and physical attraction and you know, wanting to be with someone. If you talk with people who are in an established relationship of several years old, they talk about things like friendship, shared interests, the ability to care for each other. Um and so there's this kind of maturation of the relationship. Um, if it works, of course, for some people, you know, as the honeymoon period wears off, they think, who on earth is this person I'm with? And they choose somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Um, could yeah, could you talk a little bit more about that then? What happens in the brain when we shift from that kind of obsessive early early phase to that more mature, kind of stable kind of uh relationship status?

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Yeah, so less is known about the kind of specific brain changes. Um, I mean, in some ways, what is happening is your brain is restoring itself to normality. So, for instance, that suppression of the fear responses that happens early on is alleviated. And for that reason, you know, some people do sort of wake up and suddenly realize they're with someone that they really don't like. Um, uh, so some of that is restored. Of course, it's conflated by the fact that in an established relationship, lots of other things change. And many of us who are in a relationship that is sort of three, four, five years old start to do things like you know, live together, get married possibly, have children sometimes, all of which do you know tremendous things to your brain? Um, uh, and so it's quite difficult to distinguish, I guess, a brain pattern that is associated purely with established older love. Um, and so we know less about that, really.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

And then moving on to attachment theory, then also, how does uh attachment theory kind of connect with romantic love? Is there similarities between how we kind of treat our romantic partners, between how we treat infants?

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yes, slightly, uh depending on how you view it, it's either lovely or slightly disturbing. Um, to think there are actually quite a lot of similarities between the you know, both parental love uh and romantic love. Uh and one of the ideas about this is that if you think about if you think of firsthand about love, classical love in adults, it doesn't make much evolutionary sense, right? If evolution is about successful reproduction, sticking with one partner, having you know two or three or even ten kids, and then staying with them post-reproductively doesn't make a lot of sense. Especially, I have to say, unfortunately, as a man, for men who remain reproductively fertile into relatively old age, if you were just worried about maximizing your offspring, you wouldn't hang around, you'd kind of move on. So, in that case, why has evolution favoured this idea that we develop a strong attachment so I want to stay with them for the rest of our lives? Some of us, at least, not everyone. Um, so uh so and one of the ideas for that is that this is not itself evolutionarily selected for, but is the consequence of things that are incredibly beneficial in early age. And so, attachment theory, this idea you have a strong uh the need as an infant to bond very strongly with adults and for them to bond with you so they can look after you. You forge this strong emotional connection, adults respond very strongly to that and form a tight uh um attachment to their infants to look after them. The idea then is that as an adult, that same emotional interaction is what governs romantic love. So you're kind of bonding tightly with your romantic partner in the same way that you bond tightly with the baby. Um, and actually, one of the interesting things is if you uh think about the sort of drivers for that, many of the things we do with babies are also the same things we do with partners. So yeah, lots of physical contact, kissing, cuddling, hugging are hallmarks of infant love but also romantic love. Um, and and one of the things we talked about in the lecture, which I really love, is this idea that people develop a special language. So many people talk to babies in a way that they don't talk to other adult humans uh in any other context, other than when they're in romantic partnerships and they have, you know, pet names for each other and you know, do all sorts of stuff that those of us listening in a train carriage think, really? Uh but you know, that sort of baby talk is a hallmark of romantic relationships as well as baby relationships.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Another thing you also mentioned in the lecture is the idea that love and addiction are very closely kind of related. Um, is that a useful way to frame it? Do you think that love is an addiction or do you think that's kind of reductive in some way?

SPEAKER_00 32:41

Yeah, I think you have to be very careful about uh going too far down that line, not least because you know, I definitely wouldn't want to sort of diminish the uh the huge impact that genuine addiction has on people and you know that we need to help with. Uh, but there are good biological reasons to think that some aspects of romantic love are like addiction, not least if you look at the brain areas that are activated during early romantic love, many of them are associated with reward and craving and are the same areas that light up in substance addiction, for instance. So there is an element of that. Um, and there's quite a lot of interest in this, particularly in the context of what we might call like as inappropriate love. So, people, for instance, who return repeatedly to an abusive relationship, uh, you know, where clearly at face value, that's a very, very bad thing to do. And if you talk to people who are sort of trapped in those relationships, they talk about this addiction, this inability to live without the partner who is clearly not good for them. Um, and so there's quite a lot of interest in whether we may be able to use some of the tools that are being used for substance addiction to help people that are in those relationships get out of them, for instance. Uh so things like cognitive behavioral therapy to think about how you rationalise the relationship and break out of it, um, I think could potentially be useful tools to help people who are stuck in those situations.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

And going deeper on that then, if love activates the same reward pathways as addictive substances, then what does heartbreak look like through that lens?

SPEAKER_00 34:07

Yeah, I think um it's sort of like the kind of yin and yang of this, right? So you have a pathway that is rewarding you for being in a romantic uh situation. Um, and it feels good, right? For those of us who follow, it feels good to see that partner and to be with them and all these kind of things because it's rewarding you. Clearly, if that's suddenly withdrawn, you know, either through bereavement or because they've decided better of it and you hadn't realized, um, uh, you know, that the consequence of that is essentially like a like a bereavement, even if they're perfectly well and just found somebody else to live with, uh, you know, it feels like bereavement because you have you you have not yet lost that reward pathway, that addiction pathway, um, but you're not getting the hit anymore. And so uh so yeah, there is absolutely a strong overlap between this idea of kind of romantic reward and romantic bereavement, if you like.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

I think the big question then is um how much of love is real as in like general connection and meaningfulness, and how much of it is like brain signals and chemicals just kind of like sparking.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Yeah, and there's been a lot of interest in that. And I think, you know, I mean, at one level, of course, everything we ever do is all just about brain chemicals. Uh, as a slightly depressing kind of uh thought to think about in in in uh day-to-day life. Um, there has been a lot of interest in molecules that stimulate uh apparently stimulate romantic partnerships. And so the the one that we talk about a lot is oxytocin. This is this hormone that is often called a kind of bonding hormone. Very important in some animals to pair either parent with child, uh, so uh, you know, mother sheep with lamb, etc., etc. Um, but also apparently in pair bonding in animals that better bond for a long period of time. And the one that we talk about in the lecture that has been well studied is the prairie vole, which mates for life essentially, and in which oxytocin appears to be the primary molecule to help them make that pair bond. We make oxytocin as well. Um, and so there was a sort of a lot of interest in whether a kind of sniff of oxytocin might suddenly be like a love drug and you're kind of passionately in love with the person who's next to you. Um, probably reassuringly that's not the case. Um, uh, and in fact, the evidence for oxytocin having a strong role in human romance is relatively slender, although there is a bit of evidence that we talk about in the lecture that it may be important for re-establishing or to maintaining romantic bonds that already exist. So rather than having a sniff of oxytocin and falling for the guy who's next to you on the bus, um, a sniff of oxytocin helps you remember the fact that your guy at home is actually the partner you're meant to do and you're less interested in the guy next to you on the bus.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

That sounds like good advice to me. Um, okay, so I think obviously after the lectures, there were so many questions and kind of thoughts in the audiences. There's some that I would love to read out today. Um, so if the early stages of love mimic anxiety, could someone who is anxious misread their symptoms as falling in love or vice versa?

SPEAKER_00 36:49

Yeah, a very interesting question. And I think, of course, for people who struggle with interpreting other people's emotions, say people who are on the you know, autism spectrum, for example, love is a minefield, right? Um, because it's perhaps one of the emotions where we are most uh uh deceptive in some ways. You know, it's quite easy for people to flirt in a way that you know you might misinterpret as being this is the partner for the rest of my life. Uh and equally easy for people to sort of shield their emotions, they don't want to make themselves vulnerable when they're actually they fall over your head over heels. Um so yeah, I think there is a real there is a real challenge there. And I think people who if you if you have anxiety, I mean, again, difficult to kind of discern what's the difference between the brain chemistry of anxiety, if you like, versus the fact that you know, if you have anxiety and you're anxious about things, you know, a romantic gamble is a really big thing that many of us get anxious about anyway. So you might be expected to find that a kind of more difficult minefield uh to navigate. So so yeah, I think um, you know, I think new romance for pretty much everyone is a bit of a bit of a minefield, really.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Another question asks can be in an early stage love make you irritable or less tolerant of people outside of the relationship?

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um I I think and it's about this hyper-vigilance, this idea that early in romance we develop a very, very um obsessive focus with the person we're romantically interested in, to the exclusion of other things. And I and I'm sure many of us have that experience at school where suddenly you and a you were your best friend's vanished uh because they found someone to you know be romantically interested in. Um, and I think one of the challenges is because the person in love is hyper-vigilant towards this person, they of course don't realize they're being neglectful of other things, and therefore they become intolerant when people say, Well, you're not spending time in a Friday night. Um so yeah, that it can be a it can be challenging to navigate as a friend, I think.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Yeah, I think another last question goes uh is love essentially an attachment system that's been repurposed?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Yeah, that's kind of the primary theory, I think, is that this is about uh so romantic love is a sort of extension of familial love, of parental love, um similar but different. Um I think that's quite a that is quite a kind of compelling theory, really. Of course, I mean it's very difficult, you know, to kind of play back evolutionary clock and think which one came first, for instance. Uh, but I would say it's probably reasonable to surmise if you look at other animals, for example, you know, many, many animals show parental care. Not all, obviously, you know, grasshoppers, you know, leave their eggs and disappear, but that many animals look after their offspring. Far fewer animals forge long-lasting, what we might call romantic relationships, life partnerships. Um, and so you I think it's reasonable to imagine that you first came parental love, later developed romantic love.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

And um, yeah, I think those are the questions for me. But I just wanted to say, I think like both lectures that you gave, the grief and the love, were completely amazing lectures. Everyone should go check out the lecture because I think there's so much to learn from those emotions, but also there's so much to learn from the lecture. And uh, before we leave, uh, you there is a lecture you have coming up next. Could you give us a little kind of synopsis about what to expect?

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Absolutely, yes. And uh, let me hope those of you who do go check your lectures. I check out love before grief. Grief has got radio motion. Um, yeah, so the last lecture in the series is going to be about manipulating emotions. We've talked throughout this series about different emotions, hate, fear, love, um, etc. Uh, and in every case, there's a sort of biological basis that you might imagine either now or in the future we could manipulate. And um, and there are good reasons to do that and there are bad reasons to do that. So, in the last lecture, we'll talk about ways in which we might manipulate emotions. Uh, we'll talk about potential applications for that. And importantly, we'll talk about the question of whether we should. Uh, you know, should we solve everyone's grief problems? Um, maybe. What about if we, you know, make everyone fall in love with people we think is appropriate for them? Not so great. Um, so yeah, lots to talk about in that one.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

I'm looking forward to it. Thank you so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 40:36

Thanks a lot.