Brain Concepts Of The Lover Essay
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Brain Concepts Of The Lover Essay
It is a truism to say that most people develop a preference for the kind of person they want to love, and hence a concept of their potential lover(s); their likelihood of falling in love
what he really wanted to write about was not about Beatrice (who was dead by then) but about ‘‘lo gloriosa donna de la mia mente’’ (the glorious lady of my mind).
In matters of love and attachment, we can go a little further and sketch in outline form the chemistry that underlies the concept of the loved one that the brain forms. Unfortunately, we cannot do so for man yet but for much simpler animals, the prairie voles, rats, mice, marmosets and monkeys. But it would be hard to believe that similar, though almost certainly infi nitely more complex mechanisms, do not operate in humans.
Perhaps the first step in this enquiry is to look at the chem istry of the human brain areas that are activated during romantic love, and in particular oxytocin, vasopressin and dopamine. Most brain regions, including subcortical regions, that have been determined to contain receptors for oxytocin and vasopressin are activated by both romantic and maternal love. To better understand the role of these chemicals in bond ing, we have to rely on recent experiments on prairie voles.
Oxytocin and vasopressin have many effects but most rele vant from our point of view is that, not only are they involved in bonding between individuals but have also been found to be effective in learning and memory, but only in a social context. Both are released when prairie voles have sex. They are inti mately linked to dopamine, which is associated with reward. And although prairie voles are a long way from man, the re lease of these hormones in other animals, including man, under similar conditions makes it likely that their human counter parts are also strongly involved in activities associated with romantic and maternal love, which is not to say that these are their only functions. The story of voles is actually of great biological interest, especially when one contrasts two species, the prairie and the montane vole, the former having monoga mous relationships (with the occasional fling thrown in) and the latter indulging in promiscuous sex without long-term attachment. If the release of these two hormones is blocked in prairie voles, they too become promiscuous. If, however, prairie voles are injected with these hormones but prevented from having sex, they will continue to be faithful to their part ners, that is to have a monogamous though chaste relation ship. One might have imagined that injection of these hormones into the promiscuous montane voles would make of them virtuous, monogamous, animals too. But that is not