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As a result, the study of love is pretty new and the phenomenon is still largely a mystery. The studies that have been conducted are relatively small, and they
only hint at the neurological basis of love — they don't fully define it.

Still, here are a few interesting things that scientists have learned so far.

1. The first stage of romantic love is a bit like a drug addiction

Fisher distinguishes the early torrent of romantic love and the longer-term, calmer attachment phase that follows. She found that a brain in the initial stage of
love looks surprisingly like a brain experiencing a drug addiction.

"When we put people who've just fallen happily in love into a brain scanner, we find heightened activity in a few different brain regions," she says. "The big
ones are the ventral tegmental area — the VTA — and the caudate nucleus." The scans compared participants' brains when looking at photos of their lovers,
versus photos of random acquaintances. And participants who'd scored higher on a survey that measured feelings of love, moreover, had proportionately
more activity in the VTA and caudate nucleus.

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Experiments show that people in love have elevated activity in the VTA (left) and caudate nucleus (right). (Fisher et. al. 2005)