A neurofunctional signature of romantic love predicts rewards on social media, effects of oxytocin and drug-cue reactivity

Authors

Wu, Y., Gan, X., Jiao, G., Hurlemann, R., Scheele, D., Zhou, X., Zhang, R., Zhou, F., Jiang, H., Fu, K., Wang, J., Teng, Y., Becker, B.

Abstract

Romantic love is a selective motivational state supporting pair bonding, yet its neural representation and relation to other affiliative-rewarding experiences remain unclear. Across eight fMRI studies (n=420) spanning naturalistic affiliative-reward, pharmacological and addiction-relevant experiments, we developed and evaluated multivariate whole-brain decoders of romantic love and friendship. Both signatures engaged mesocorticolimbic reward systems and the precuneus, yet were dissociable at the whole-brain level and in their recruitment of social-cognitive systems. The love signature generalized to reward on social media, was specific to positive valence, and did not track sweet-taste or monetary reward, indicating a distinct social-affiliative reward representation. Oxytocin selectively increased love - but not friendship - signature reactivity to the romantic partner. In an independent drug-cue-reactivity dataset, the love signature specifically identified heavy cannabis users. These findings establish a dissociable neurofunctional signature of romantic love in conserved bonding circuits that extend to digital affiliation and are co-opted in addiction.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 18 Aug 2026.

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