Your Brain on Love: the Three Stages to Euphoria

Romantic love is a three staged phenomenon including lust, attraction, and attachment. It involves a myriad of neurotransmitters meant to improve biological and cultural evolution by biochemically altering emotion and behavior. Important neurotransmitters and hormones include sex steroids, norepinephrine, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and vasopressin. The responses involve a constellation of brain pathways, and, for example, the lower limbic brain regulates reward, motivation, sex, and parenting. In addition, other factors include major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins and pheromones for attracting mates with well-matched immunity types, nerve growth factor (NGF) playing a part in bonding, and the autonomic nervous system, fight or flight and rest and digest, respectively composed of the sympathetic and parasympathetic responses.