Neural substrates and behavioral profiles of romantic jealousy and its temporal dynamics.
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.
National Institute on Drug Dependence, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.
Yan
Y
Sun
Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Hongbo
H
Yu
National Institute on Drug Dependence, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.|Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, China.
Jie
J
Chen
National Institute on Drug Dependence, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.|Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, China.
Jie
J
Liang
National Institute on Drug Dependence, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.|Institute of Mental Health/Peking University Sixth Hospital and National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders &Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.|Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences and PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Lin
L
Lu
Center for Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.|Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences and PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.|Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.|Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Xiaolin
X
Zhou
National Institute on Drug Dependence, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.|Beijing Key Laboratory on Drug Dependence Research, China.|The State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, Beijing, China.|Key Laboratory for Neuroscience of the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Public Healthy, Beijing, China.
Jie
J
Shi
D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007578:Jealousy; D008149:Love; D008297:Male