The Brain in Love: 12 Lessons to Enhance Your Love Life

Praise for
The Brain in Love

“Amen tackles the neuroscience of attraction like a tour guide in a candy store.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“A scientist, a lover, and a parent, Dr. Amen understands who we are as couples, and helps us to become the best lovers and friends we can be.”

—MICHAEL GURIAN, author of
What Could He Be
Thinking?: How a Man’s Mind Really Works

“Dr. Amen does it again! He offers a brilliant explanation of how the state of our brain affects our relationships and sexuality. He goes on to give excellent advice on how to understand your own and your partner’s (or potential partner’s) behavior, how to avoid the pitfalls in a relationship, and how to create the life you really want!”

—HYLA CASS, M.D., author of
8 Weeks to Vibrant Health

Praise for
Making a Good Brain Great
Winner of Audiophile’s Earphone Award

“This book is wonderful. It gives the reader great understanding and hope that changes in oneself can be made. If you put these changes into action, a happy and healthy brain is yours.”

—BILL COSBY

“Each of Daniel Amen’s books contains special nuggets that can be found nowhere else, as well as a wealth of useful, general information that he brings together under one roof. This book offers excellent advice as well as a great deal of new information. An extremely useful and easy-to-read book.”

—EDWARD HALLOWELL, M.D., author of
Delivered from
Distraction
and
The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

Praise for
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life
New York Times
Bestseller

“Cutting-edge technology, clinical wisdom, and heartfelt guidance come together to create a ‘user’s manual for enhancing the human brain.’ Dr. Amen offers simple, direct, and immediately applicable prescriptions that can change anyone’s life.”

—EMMETT E. MILLER, M.D., author of
Deep Healing: The Essence of Mind/Body Medicine

“Dr. Amen’s groundbreaking work will forever change the fields of psychiatry and psychology. A healthy brain is prerequisite to a healthy life. Dr. Amen provides a practical guide.”

—EARL HENSLIN, Ph.D., author of
You Are Your Father’s
Daughter
and
Man to Man: Helping Fathers Relate to
Sons and Sons Relate to Fathers

“This book is brilliant. Dr. Amen is a pioneer.”

—JONATHAN WALKER, M.D., psychiatrist

A
LSO BY
D
ANIEL
G. A
MEN
, M.D.

Magnificent Mind at Any Age
Making a Good Brain Great
Preventing Alzheimer’s
(with neurologist William R. Shankle)
Healing Anxiety and Depression
(with psychiatrist Lisa Routh)
Healing the Hardware of the Soul
Images of Human Behavior: A Brain SPECT Atlas
Healing ADD Power Program
Healing ADD
Change Your Brain, Change Your Life
Firestorms into the Brain
New Skills for Frazzled Parents
Mind Coach
Would You Give Two Minutes a Day for a Lifetime of Love?
The Most Important Thing in Life I Learned from a Penguin
Ten Steps to Building Values Within Children
ADD in Intimate Relationships
Healing the Chaos Within
A Teenagers Guide to A.D.D
.
(written with Antony Amen and Sharon Johnson)
A Child’s Guide to ADD
A Sibling’s Guide to ADD
The Secrets of Successful Students
How to Get Out of Your Own Way

Contents

  
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

  
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Brain Is the
Largest Sex Organ
(and Size Matters!)        

• As you walk by me, millions of nerve cells spark in my brain and I have to turn to look at you again.
  

• You look back at me and a soft, brief smile forms on your lips. As you notice my eyes following you, your smile triggers an adrenaline release that causes my heart to leap with excitement.
  

• Chemicals send increased blood flow to sensitive areas, as thoughts of you light the emotional fire centers of my mind.
  

• For a brief moment you literally live in my skin.
  

• As we connect, my mind works overtime obsessing on your smell and the color of your eyes.
  

• You beat in my heart.
  

• You pulse in my nervous system from the nerve pathways of my brain to the soles of my feet.
  

• I start to become disoriented when we are apart.
  

• Over time, your touch becomes essential.
  

• I crave you.
  

• Your body feels warm and reassuring.
  

• I need it next to me.
  

• I sleep peacefully knowing you are near, and wake often in the dark to feel your skin.
  

• I never want to get out of bed when I am lying next to you.
  

• I look for you in my brain when you are away.
  

• Your voice sweetens the vibrations in the air.
  

• My mind beseeches me to make love to you, again and again.
  

• Our bodies navigate space together.
  

• Your mind reads mine as you know how I want to be touched.
  

• How does that happen?
  

• You must have cells that mirror my desires.
  

• The neurons of my eyes light up with sparks when you walk in a room, especially if you have been away for a while.
  

• Songs, smells, places, and pictures never let me forget you as they trigger the memory centers in my brain where you live as if you were next to me.
  

• The judgment part of my brain watches what I say when we are together so I can protect your feelings.
  

• I watch how your eyes, face, and body move as you talk to me, to know if you are happy, desirous, or in need of a hug or understanding.
  

Even though it feels genital, the vast majority of love and sex occurs in the brain. Your brain decides who is attractive to you, how to get a date, how well you do on the date, what to do with the feelings that develop, how long those feelings last, when to commit, and how well you do as a partner and a parent. Your brain helps you be enthusiastic in the bedroom or drains you of desire and passion. Your brain helps you process and learn from a breakup or makes you vulnerable to depression or obsession. When the brain works right, it helps you be thoughtful, playful, romantic, intimate, committed, and loving with your partner. When the brain is dysfunctional, it causes you to be impulsive, distracted, addicted, unfaithful, angry, and even hateful, thus ruining chances for continued intimacy and love.

Your brain is also the seat of orgasms. Some research implicates the right hemisphere of the brain. In fact, certain forms of epilepsy, especially those found in the right temporal lobe, have
been associated with spontaneous orgasms. In one case from Taiwan, a forty-one-year-old woman had seizures that were induced only when she brushed her teeth. The seizure started with the feelings of being sexually aroused, then she felt an orgasmlike euphoria wash over her, which was followed by feelings of confusion. Her brain-imaging studies showed problems in the right temporal lobe, an area that has been associated with both orgasms and religious experience. When someone has orgasmiclike feelings when brushing her teeth, odds are that she will have very clean pearly whites.

Scientists agree that the brain is the organ of behavior; as such, it really is the largest sex organ in the body (about three pounds), and in this case size really does matter. Our brain becomes less and less active and decreases in overall size as we age. This is true for males and females and there appears to be an equal loss of gray matter (nerve cell bodies) and white matter (the connections between nerve cells). If you learn to take care of your brain, however, it can be active and healthy throughout your life. With targeted interventions, you can impact brain health, lose less brain tissue, and keep your brain healthy well into your elderly years.

Why does this matter to sexual function? As the brain dims in activity over the decades, so, too, does many people’s sexual function. The two go together. In men between the ages of forty and seventy studied over a nine-year period, there was a significant decline in sexual function with age. This is consistent with past studies that have shown a decline in sexual desire, intercourse, and erection frequency. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is very common and increases with age. Forty percent of men in their forties, and 70 percent in their seventies had problems. In women, aging and menopause often negatively affect sexual interest and performance.

A major reason underlying both sexual and brain dysfunction is decreased blood flow. Blood does so many important things. It brings oxygen, sugar, and nutrients to your cells and it takes away waste products. Anything that interferes with healthy blood flow
will impair an organ’s functioning. Decreased blood flow to genitals from hypertension; vascular disease; diabetes; toxic exposure, such as drug abuse or smoking; physical trauma; and other causes impairs sexual function. Increased blood flow, from targeted interventions including exercise, ginkgo, and compounds that increase nitric oxide, such as Viagra and ginseng, improves function and reverses aging.

Likewise, decreased blood flow to your brain, from any cause, decreases brain function, which means you are likely to make impaired decisions and subsequently have less sex. Few scientists have looked at the connection between brain health and sexual behavior. That’s where I come in. My primary work is as a brain-imaging specialist. I have been doing imaging work for more than sixteen years and my clinics have the world’s largest database of scans related to behavior, more than 35,000. We look at the brain on a daily basis using a sophisticated study called SPECT imaging. SPECT stands for “single photon emission computed tomography,” a nuclear medicine study that evaluates blood flow and activity patterns in the brain. We have looked at many healthy brains and brains in trouble. We have looked at the brains of children, teenagers, adults, and the elderly. We have looked at brains on medications, drug and alcohol abuse, supplements, prayer and meditation, gratitude, and a wide variety of psychological and biological treatments. We have looked at the brain in love, lust, commitment, divorce, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and loss.