Love On My Mind
By Elizabeth Werhane '00

Edwinn Starr asked, “War, what is it good for?” but Stephanie Ortigue has posed a new question: Love, what is it good for?

Ortigue, head of the 4D Brain Electrodynamics Laboratory, tests how love affects the brain. She conducts her research under the umbrella of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Brain Imaging Center. Although Ortigue’s studies are ongoing, her testing suggests that love is good for the brain.

"I try to understand some of the most complicated experiences in our daily life,” Ortigue said. “Love is one of the most important questions to study.” 

The Brain Imaging Center has become a hub for brain studies with the addition of the 28,000-pound fMRI machine that arrived on campus in June 2007. An MRI machine generates images of the brain. The f stands for functional; you can have someone in the machine complete a task and see what part of their brain becomes activated.

 The fMRI data creates a comprehensive map of where brain activity happens, showing three-dimensional images of the brain. Researchers also collect data from the university’s Geodesic EEG system, which provide data on when activity happens in the brain. Combining the two ñ with the when and the where information — gives researchers a four-dimensional look at the operation of the brain, making it easier to see correlations between cause and effect.

To begin her tests, Ortigue had to find people in love. Volunteers who stated they were in love completed the Passionate Love Scale questionnaire, a series of questions created by Elaine Hafield in 1986 to determine whether someone meets psychology’s definition of love.

The survey asks them to rate statements on a scale of one through nine, with one meaning ìnot at all” and nine meaning ìdefinitely.” Examples include “I would rather be with _____ than anyone else.”  And ìI have an endless appetite for affection from _____.”

The Swiss National Foundation initially funded Ortigue’s research when she was at Dartmouth. She’s now applying for other sources of funding. 

When Ortigue conducted similar studies at Dartmouth in previous years, she exclusively tested women subjects. After coming to UC Santa Barbara in October 2006, she extended it to men. “It was pretty hard to find men in love on campus,” Ortigue said, but she found that some exist.

Even before enrolling subjects, Ortigue’s test plan went before the Human Subjects Committee, which conducts an ethical review.

Kathy Graham, research personnel analyst for the Human Subjects Committee, said the fMRI itself has minimal physical risk ñ as did Stephanie’s test overall. “Whether someone is in love or not in love is not going to increase the risk to the individual,” Graham said.

In her study, subjects in love and not in love were placed in the fMRI machine. They watched a display area, where the name of the person they were in love with might be presented subliminally — so fast that their brain couldn’t consciously read the name. They were then asked to do a “lexical decision task.” They would be shown an arrangement of letters quickly, and then they had to determine whether it was a real word or not.

Ortigue found that when people were really in love, they were faster to do a task if their love’s name had been subliminally presented. She may conduct similar tests using subliminal images of the face of the person the subject loves.

Ortigue expanded her studies to examine whether loving something had similar effects to loving someone. In collaboration with Dr. Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli, a Swiss psychiatrist, she developed a variation of Hatfield’s questionnaire called the Passion Scale. The Passion Scale gauges how enamored someone is with a particular hobby or activity, such as music or surfing.

In tests of loving someone or loving something, the part of the brain activated by love is in the angular gyrus — a portion of the brain approximately above the left ear. It’s an area of the brain associated with self-representation as well.

With the fMRI machine in the basement of the psychology building, UC Santa Barbara is well equipped to peek into the mind. The fMRI on campus has a 3-tesla magnet, returning higher spatial resolution than most hospital MRI machines, which typically have a 1.5-tesla magnet. ìIt gives you a very nice picture of your brain,” Ortigue said.

The MRI, a Siemens Magnetom Trio, can take a picture of the brain in as few as four minutes. In tests that ask subjects to perform a task, someone can be in the fMRI for up to two hours.

As stewards of this research tool, the Brain Imaging Center, led by Director Scott Grafton, collaborates with other scientists to learn about the brain.

The Parkinson Association of Santa Barbara teamed up with Ortigue to study whether love can improve reaction times. Parkinson’s patients, often characterized by their decreased motor functionality, stand to benefit from activities that help the brain react faster. In the past six months, Ortigue tested 12 patients ñ both on and off medication ñ and although testing is not complete, she said she’s seen promising results.

Ortigue’s not talking much about applications of her studies yet, although she hints that if there’s a way to re-create the brain activity of someone in love, it might be possible to reap the benefits of love without being in love.

She’s also not talking on the question of whether she has a significant other. She doesn’t wear a ring, and she limited her confession to a coy “I am in love with neuro science.”

What’s next? “I want to see if love can improve creativity,” Ortigue said.