Neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of all neuroimaging studies of love using fMRI and compared them with the results obtained for different types of love, which I schematically presented above. Love, regardless of its type (e.g., passionate romantic love, maternal love, unconditional love), has been found to activate a specific brain network involving a set of 12 major brain regions (i.e., caudate/putamen; thalamus; ventral tegmental area; anterior insula; anterior cingulate cortex; posterior hippocampus; occipital cortex; occipitotemporal/fusiform cortex, angular gyrus/temporoparietal junction, middle dorsolateral frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and precentral gyrus; What you see in my representation is that the neural bases of love are more complex and subject to greater cognitive impact than previously thought, because they involve areas of the brain that go beyond the basic emotional system. but also cortical association areas (such as angular gyrus/temporal parietal), which mediate more complex and cognitive functions, such as self-expansion, body image, self-representation, metaphors, attention, memory, and abstract representations. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cop1EwmrNsf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

















