Citation

Sun Y, Yu H, Chen J, Liang J, Lu L, Zhou X, Shi J. Sci. Rep. 2016; 6: e27469.

Affiliation

Key Laboratory for Neuroscience of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Public Healthy, Beijing, China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/srep27469

PMID

27273024

Abstract

Jealousy is not only a way of experiencing love but also a stabilizer of romantic relationships, although morbid romantic jealousy is maladaptive. Being engaged in a formal romantic relationship can tune one's romantic jealousy towards a specific target. Little is known about how the human brain processes romantic jealousy by now. Here, by combining scenario-based imagination and functional MRI, we investigated the behavioral and neural correlates of romantic jealousy and their development across stages (before vs. after being in a formal relationship). Romantic jealousy scenarios elicited activations primarily in the basal ganglia (BG) across stages, and were significantly higher after the relationship was established in both the behavioral rating and BG activation. The intensity of romantic jealousy was related to the intensity of romantic happiness, which mainly correlated with ventral medial prefrontal cortex activation. The increase in jealousy across stages was associated with the tendency for interpersonal aggression. These results bridge the gap between the theoretical conceptualization of romantic jealousy and its neural correlates and shed light on the dynamic changes in jealousy.

Language: en