The Thin Line: Love And Hate
November 17, 2008
The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions – but hate retains a semblance of rationality
Love and hate are intimately linked within the human brain, according to a study that has discovered the biological basis for the two most intense emotions.
Scientists studying the physical nature of hate have found that some of the nervous circuits in the brain responsible for it are the same as those that are used during the feeling of romantic love – although love and hate appear to be polar opposites.
A study using a brain scanner to investigate the neural circuits that become active when people look at a photograph of someone they say they hate has found that the “hate circuit” shares something in common with the love circuit.
The findings could explain why both hate and romantic love can result in similar acts of extreme behaviour – both heroic and evil – said Professor Semir Zeki of University College London, who led the study published in the on-line journal PloS ONE.
“Hate is often considered to be an evil passion that should, in a better world, be tamed, controlled and eradicated. Yet to the biologist, hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love,” Professor Zeki said.
“Like love, it is often seemingly irrational and can lead individual to heroic and evil deeds. How can two opposite sentiments lead to the same behaviour?”
The study advertised for volunteers to take part in the study and 17 people were chosen who professed a deep hatred for one individual. Most chose an ex-lover or a competitor at work, although one woman expressed an intense hatred for a famous political figure.
Professor Zeki and John Romaya of the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology analysed the activity of the neural circuits in the brain that lit up when the volunteers were viewing photos of the hated person.
They found that the hate circuit includes parts of the brain called the putamen and the insula, found in the sub-cortex of the organ. The putamen is already known to be involved in the perception of contempt and disgust and may also be part of the motor system involved in movement and action.
“Significantly, the putamen and the insula are also both activated by romantic love. This is not surprising. The putamen could also be involved in the preparation of aggressive acts in a romantic context, as in situations when a rival presents a danger,” Professor Zeki said.
“Previous studies have suggested that the insula may be involved in responses to distressing stimuli, and the viewing of both a loved and a hated face may constitute such a distressing signal.”
One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.
“This may seem surprising since hate can also be an all-consuming passion like love. But whereas in romantic love, the lover is often less critical and judgemental regarding the loved person, it is more likely that in the context of hate the hater may want to exercise judgement in calculating moves to harm, injure or otherwise exact revenge,” Professor Zeki said.
“Interestingly, the activity of some of these structures in response to a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have implications in criminal cases.”
November 17, 2008 at 10:46 AM
I once had a lively discussion with a Ph.D (Psychology) regarding Love and Hate where I asserted that the opposite of love was not hate but rather apathy. Any comments ?
November 17, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Jon,
Apathy is the exact opposite of both. I don’t think it could be connected to any form of neutrality, either. I think being neutral, in and of itself, which requires one to be sentient. But apathy, to me anyway, is being completely devoid of all emotion/feelings. And I’ll take it one step further and say that I think we evolve into feelings of apathy.
I’m admittedly quite limited in scope psychologically speaking and what I know about human behavior could fill Freud’s coke spoon, but I do think apathy is an evolutionary process; an eventuality if we’re predisposed to it. (and I’ve known people who don’t seem to possess an apathetic bone in their bodies; they’re emotional spigots) I think apathy is what we don’t feel after first feeling something intensely. But I also think a prolonged state of apathy can be just as dangerous.
But I will also admit that at certain times, it can be a glorious reprieve.
LK
November 17, 2008 at 2:33 PM
Apathy may indeed be the entropy of consciousness and sentience.
November 17, 2008 at 3:02 PM
And then Jon, we could get into how a true narcissist if completely devoid of all things emotional, save for self preservation and of course, the incessant draining the poor co-dependent schlub who serves as his or her narcissistic supply train, but that’s another post, I would imagine.
November 17, 2008 at 5:46 PM
Anyone know the name of the brain study that demonstrated that the brain/body cannot distinguish between hurling invective at another and being attacked ourselves? The same regions of the brain light up whether we are attacking or being attacked. Nor can the brain distinguish between loving gestures we make towards another and the effect of these loving gestures upon our own brain chemistry. Anyway, seems related to this study, insofar as so much of the content of love/hate is a projection anyway.
As far as apathy goes, the best way I have of understanding apathy is as a defense mechanism against the risk of caring to love or hate. Keep it up and one could find themselves cultivating a Big Depression.
November 20, 2008 at 1:16 PM
The same regions of the brain light up whether we are attacking or being attacked. — Daisy
Wouldn’t this indicate a common “fight center”? If so, wouldn’t there be some similarity to the regions involved in the fight-or-flight reaction?
June 24, 2011 at 4:32 AM
A few brief comments about this article. Firstly, the biological is merely one aspect of human reality. There are others…
Love and Hate (the words) derive their meaning not least in part from our cultural and social experiences. The words …themselves cannot retain any semblance of rationality. It is the intelligence of the individual(s) using those words, feeling those words, interpreting those words, that may or may not be handling them rationally. The words merely signify. How can Hate, above Love, be more intrinsically ‘rational’?
The brain might enable the conceptualisation of meaning, thus it is implicit in meaning-making, but it does not explain it. Human consciousness cannot and must not be reduced to Biology. It needs to include Biology in its awareness, but not negate everything else in favour of it. How does that man, who killed his wife, feel when someone says, “You’re an idiot! What you feel is only in your brain so you ought not to be so impassioned!” Smart move. It could get you killed.
The physical nature of hate: what is being refereed to here is not the nature of Hate, but the affects experiences associated with Love or Hate have upon the individual’s biology.
“The findings could explain why both hate and romantic love can result in similar acts of extreme behaviour – both heroic and evil – said Professor Semir Zeki of University College London, who led the study published in the on-line journal PloS ONE.”
Indeed, the findings do tell us something about the biological aspect of our ultimate nature, about the potential for extreme passionate behaviour, but the study scarcely penetrates and says nothing about why these behaviours manifest. That is a deeper issue, but one we can understand.
“One major difference between love and hate appears to be in the fact that large parts of the cerebral cortex – associated with judgement and reasoning – become de-activated during love, whereas only a small area is deactivated in hate.”
Indeed, we prefer Love to Hate! Thus when Love is rejected, undermined, we become Irrational. If in Love our judgement and reasoning is less active, we are more blissful, in a state of Unity, Oneness, thus we do not concern ourselves with the sense of it. We just experience it. In Hate, we tend to try to rationalise it, understand it and in the process, we misunderstand it, handle it badly and thus behave in extreme ways that disturbs society. There is a marked difference between Love and Hate, then, in social terms? One’s more favourable than the other? There is thus a hierarchy of extremes? Professor Zeki seems to gloss over the complex process involved in decision making: the hater might simply react and thus exercise ill-judgement in calculating moves to recapture, re-establish his relationship with Love, to reconstruct the ideal of Love, thus resulting in harm, injury and, for Zeki, a kind of revenge.
“Interestingly, the activity of some of these structures in response to a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have implications in criminal cases.”
Quantified from a third-person perspective: any ‘declared intensity of hate’ comes from within, from the mind of the individual, constructed through, partially, Historical and Social conditioning, thus it is still a subjective view. What Zeki is doing is subjectively observing a subjective experience, and quantifying it using an objective method – empiricism. It ought, thus, only rationalise and explain at the expense of all that is not knowable through Science, and there are those things that are not knowable. Why did the he Hate the face? And not Love the face? What variable defines the difference between Love and Hate? We would have to go inside the mind and look at the subjective in a first-person state. We would need to know how the face came to be hatable. Biology cannot do this, no matter how hard it tries.