Altered brain network organization in romantic love as measured with resting-state fMRI and graph theory
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Altered brain network organization in romantic love as measured with resting-state fMRI and graph theory Chuan Wang 1 & Sensen Song 2 & Federico d’Oleire Uquillas 3 & Anna Zilverstand 4 & Hongwen Song 5 & Hong Chen 1 & Zhiling Zou 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Romantic love is a complex state that has been seen as similar to addiction. Previous task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that being in love is closely associated with functional brain changes in the reward and motivation system. However, romantic love-related functional connectivity network organization in resting-state fMRI has yet to be elucidated. To that end, here we used resting-state fMRI and graph theory to compare whole-brain functional network topology between an “in-love” group (n = 34, 16 females, currently in love and in a romantic relationship) and a “single” group (n = 32, 14 females, never in love and not in a romantic relationship). Compared to the single group, we found lower network segregation in the love group (i.e., lower small-worldness, mean clustering coefficient, and modularity), and these metrics were negatively associated with scores on the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) (an index of intense passionate/romantic love). Additionally, the love group displayed altered connectivity degree (reflecting the importance of a node): decreased degree in left angular gyrus and left medial orbitofrontal cortex, but increased degree in left fusiform gyrus. Furthermore, local efficiency or degree of these regions was significantly correlated to PLS scores. Taken together, results showed decreased overall brain functional segregation but enhanced emotional-social processing in romantic lovers. These findings provide the first evidence of love-related brain network organization changes and suggest similar but different brain network alterations between romantic love and addiction, providing new insights on the neural systems underlying romantic love. Keywords Romantic love . Resting-state fMRI . Graph theory . Angular gyrus . Fusiform
Introduction Chuan Wang and Sensen Song contributed equally to this work and share first authorship. * Hong Chen [email protected] * Zhiling Zou [email protected] 1
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
2
Department of Psychology, School of Humanities, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
3
Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA
4
Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55414, USA
5
School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Romantic love is generally regarded as one of the deepest and most meaningful human sentiments – one that has played an important role in the reproduction, development, survival and evolution of our species. Romantic love is a complex state of emotion dominated by a strong desire to be with the
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