Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and leading expert on romantic love and attachment, explores the complex neuroscience behind our feelings of love and rejection. She highlights how romantic love can be akin to an addiction, especially in the wake of heartbreak. Fisher explains the three evolved brain systems that govern mating—sex drive, romantic love, and attachment. Additionally, she shares practical insights on how to maintain passion and connection in long-term relationships, emphasizing the importance of novelty and affection.
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insights INSIGHT
Three Evolved Brain Systems
Human mating behaviors are rooted in three evolved brain systems: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment.
These systems are distinct brain circuits that evolved for different reproductive functions.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Childhood Lessons On Partnership
Helen Fisher recounts a nurturing childhood with clear lessons about partnership and sexual attraction.
She learned early that sexual attraction and respectful boundaries mattered in a healthy relationship.
insights INSIGHT
Functions Of Each Love System
Sex drive promotes broad mate-seeking, romantic love narrows focus to one person, and attachment sustains caregiving.
Each system evolved to solve different reproductive challenges across the lifespan.
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Your brain on sex, love, and rejection with biological anthropologist Helen Fisher.
What happens in the brain of someone who gets dumped? One answer is increased activity in the nucleus accumbens, which is the same brain region that becomes active when you become addicted to cocaine, cigarettes, or gambling.
Romantic love, in other words, is an addiction. That’s one key takeaway from the research of anthropologist Helen Fisher, who argues that we should learn to respect the intense feelings of people who get romantically rejected.
According to Fisher, a better understanding of how the brain processes love and romantic desire can help us find the right partner and sustain a meaningful, healthy relationship.
0:00 Charles Darwin’s ‘game of love’
0:58 Sexual attraction in a partnership
1:49 The 3 brain systems
3:20 Romantic love
4:32 Romantic rejection
5:51 Long-term love & sex drive
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About Helen Fisher:
Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. Biological anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and a Member of the Center For Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University. She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than another, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships — what she calls: slow love.
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