Love Is All In Your Head

The fierce pull of fresh love, the passion, the anxiety, the angry arguments and beautiful reconciliations, the super-charged emotions that make singer Beyonce Knowles say, "Look at what you did to me," — they're all in your head.

For the first time, researchers have located the place in the brain where those love-struck fevered feelings take root. The neural profile when you fall madly in love is similar to the profile when you feel thirst, hunger or when you crave a drug. And where the passionate romance "hot spot" is on the right side of the brain, sexual desire is on the left.

Hear about the latest research on understanding the biology of falling into love.

Guests:

Lucy Brown, professor of neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and co-author of the study "Reward, Motivation and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love" in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology;

Arthur Aron, professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook co-author of "Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction," and co-author of the new study "Reward, Motivation and Emotion Systems Associated with Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love.";

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor of the Atlantic Monthly.