Chapter 6 Further Reading: The Neuroscience of Desire
Foundational Books
Fisher, H. E. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt.
The essential starting point for accessible neurobiological accounts of romantic love. Fisher synthesizes her fMRI research with evolutionary anthropology, proposing the tripartite lust/attraction/attachment model discussed in this chapter. Compellingly written and empirically grounded, though students should note that some specific claims have been revised or complicated by subsequent research. Still the best single book for an introductory overview of the neurobiological literature.
Cacioppo, S., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2020). Wired for Love: A Neuroscientist's Journey Through Romance, Loss, and the Essence of Human Connection. MIT Press.
Stephanie Cacioppo, who directed the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Chicago and is one of the leading researchers in social neuroscience, writes accessibly about her own research and her personal experience of love and loss. The book engages seriously with the fMRI literature while acknowledging its limitations. Her work on the neural correlates of romantic rejection (discussed in Case Study 6.2) is covered in accessible detail.
Key Research Articles
Fisher, H. E., Aron, A., Mashek, D., Li, H., & Brown, L. L. (2005). "Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment." Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34(5), 431–441.
The study that established the neural-circuit evidence for Fisher's tripartite model. An important primary source for understanding what fMRI data on romantic love actually looks like.
Brown, L. L., Acevedo, B., & Fisher, H. E. (2013). "Neural correlates of four broad temperament dimensions: Testing predictions for a novel construct of personality." PLOS One, 8(11).
A later study from Fisher, Brown, and Aron's collaboration examining how neural systems underlying love interact with broader temperament dimensions — a useful bridge between the neuroimaging and personality literatures.
De Dreu, C. K. W., Greer, L. L., Van Kleef, G. A., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. J. J. (2011). "Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism." PNAS, 108(4), 1262–1266.
The key paper demonstrating that oxytocin's social effects are not uniformly prosocial — that in-group bonding can coexist with out-group hostility. Essential reading for understanding the limits of the "love hormone" narrative.
Critical Perspectives
Sear, R. (2021). "The male breadwinner model ain't even that old." Evolutionary Human Sciences, 3, e37.
Rebecca Sear, a human behavioral ecologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is one of the sharpest critics of evolutionary just-so stories about mating and attraction. Though this specific article focuses on breadwinner models, her broader body of work on cross-cultural variation in mating and parenting provides essential corrective to biological determinism. Accessible via open access.
Fine, C. (2010). Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. W. W. Norton.
Cordelia Fine's rigorous critique of "neurosexism" — the use of poorly designed neuroscience to reinforce gender stereotypes — is indispensable for evaluating claims about sex differences in the brain and attraction. Chapter 6's discussion of brain mosaics draws on this tradition of criticism.
Accessible Reading for General Background
Konnikova, M. (2015, June 22). "The man who couldn't stop lying." The New Yorker.
A profile of Paul Zak's oxytocin research that, read in conjunction with Case Study 6.1, provides a fascinating window into how science journalism amplifies and distorts experimental findings. The article itself is not critical of the oxytocin hype — it largely participates in it — which is precisely what makes it a useful case study.
Jabr, F. (2013, February 14). "Know your neurons: The chemical language of the brain." Scientific American Mind.
A clear, accessible overview of neurotransmitter systems relevant to this chapter, suitable for students who want more background on the neurochemistry discussed in sections 6.2–6.5 before engaging the primary literature.
Looking Ahead
Chapter 7 takes up the evolutionary psychology of attraction — asking how the neural mechanisms described in this chapter came to exist, and what their evolutionary history can and cannot tell us about contemporary romantic behavior. Students who found Section 6.10 (on the limits of neurobiological reductionism) provocative will find Chapter 7 extends that argument into the evolutionary domain, examining both the genuine insights and the serious limitations of evolutionary psychological models of desire.