New research: Hardwired for jealousy

Stalkers’ brains could be programmed for obsession, new research shows.

A team of researchers from the University of Pisa Medical School, Departments of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, claim they have discovered the areas of the brain responsible for making us jealous and of triggering the kind of delusional jealousy that drives stalkers – also known as Othello's syndrome after the Shakespeare character who kills his wife due to jealousy.

The researchers are keen to widen their research to examine the areas of the brain associated with being in love to see how these connect to the jealousy centers.

In a new article in the journal CNS Spectrums, which is published by Cambridge University Press, the researchers examined MRI brain scans and trawled through research into neurological and psychiatric disorders that are accompanied by delusional jealousy to reach their conclusions.

While acknowledging that jealousy is a fundamental of human experience, the authors sought to pinpoint what is happening in the brain when jealousy turns into a dangerous obsession that may result in extremely aggressive behaviour, such as stalking, suicide, or murder.

Team researcher Donatella Marazziti said the study of jealousy is just beginning: "Jealousy has long attracted the interest of both psychiatrists and psychologists, but it is only recently that it has captured the attention of neuroscience – the science of the nervous system including the brain. It has also been 'hidden' in wider classifications of disorders such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder or paranoia. Our research shows that it really deserves a category of its own – especially in its extreme forms when it provokes terrifying behaviours such as stalking or drives people to suicide or murder."