The relationship between parent and child is the strongest form of love.
Parental love is stronger than other bonds
Scientists have studied the brain activity of humans when they experience feelings of affection and found that children evoked the strongest responses.
The team used MRI scans to identify areas of the brain that are activated by six different types of love - for children, romantic partners, close friends, pets, strangers in need, and nature.
It was found that "parental love" fired up the largest number of regions within the brain and reached areas of the organ untouched by other forms of affection.
The study recruited 55 people between the ages of 28 and 53 who had at least one child (with 27 owning pets) and were all in a "loving couple relationship".
Parttyli Rinne, a researcher at Aalto University in Finland, said: "In parental love, there was activation deep in the brain's reward system, in the striatum area, while imagining love, and this was not seen for any other kind of love."