Falling in love makes men broody

 

Children on their minds? (Image: Aurelie and Morgan David de Lossy/Getty)

Falling in love really does make you broody – especially if you are a man. New lovers show greater activation of brain areas related to parental attachment when they see a baby than single people.

This was particularly pronounced in men, hinting that babies may be on their mind from the outset of a relationship. Alternatively, "men may be worried about their partner's desire for children, and their increased attention to infant stimuli is based on apprehension and the need to be more guarded", says Ruth Feldman of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, who led the research.

Feldman's team used electroencephalography to monitor the brain activity of 65 volunteers, including new parents, new lovers and singles as they viewed pictures of infants – including the parents' own babies – along with neutral pictures.

When viewing unfamiliar babies, parents and new lovers showed greater activation of brain areas associated with parenting, such as the nucleus accumbens, anterior cingulate and amygdala, than singles. The response was even greater in parents viewing their own child.

Mothers and male lovers showed slightly greater activation of these brain areas than fathers and female lovers (Biological Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.11.008).

"This suggests that even though the lovers don't know it, they are physiologically getting ready to respond to infants," says Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New York, author of Why We Love.

It also overturns a common assumption that men are less interested in babies than women. "It shows that we really don't understand men," says Fisher.

Personality counts

Fisher has just published the results of a survey of 6000 men and women in the US, which found that men are significantly more likely to make a long-term commitment with someone they didn't feel sexually attracted to if that person has all the other qualities they were looking for.

"Men fall in love faster than, and just as often as, women," says Fisher. "They're more likely to want to move in and start a more socially visible relationship in the first year than women, and men are 2.5 times more likely to kill themselves when a relationship ends."

In a separate study, Feldman and her colleagues found that falling in love also appears to buffer people from negative emotions. They showed 55 new lovers and 57 single people six video clips, including two selected to trigger positive emotions and two that would trigger negative emotions. Electrodes were used to monitor the volunteers for signs of stress.

While single people showed signs of stress when watching the negative films, new lovers seemed to be unaffected by them (Emotion, DOI: 10.1037/a0024090).

"There is something about this euphoria of falling in love that is like a protective buffer, so we don't really respond to negative emotions," says Feldman.

This may have evolutionary significance: by suppressing negative emotions, new couples find it easier to form a trusting bond with one another. "We need a calm state to allow ourselves to fall in love, otherwise there's no sense of safety," says Feldman.

"It shows that love is important and can reduce stress," adds Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University in California. He suggests that high levels of the hormone oxytocin, which has calming effects, are probably responsible.

http://www.newscientist.com/