Have you ever wondered if there was a little vial of love potion somewhere? And could we formulate one of these vials in our high-tech laboratories? The answer is: unlikely at our present state of understanding neuroscience, molecular biology and behavioural psychology.
Still, turned inside-out, love appears like a play of signals attached to receptors and parts of the brain lighting up from the surges and troughs of biologically active chemicals within each of us.
The first phase of the chemical madness unfurls the first time we feel a connection, or maybe it develops over time (for non believers of love-at-first-sight). We like our prospective partners and enjoy their pixie dust pheromones. Many animal studies show that attractive choices are based on the dissimilarity of the im-mune system in the hope that fut-ure offsprings get the best of both.
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter (the signals betw-een two brain cells separated by a tiny distance) that enhan-ces the attraction. Serontonin makes it all worth it. The way this works is called the ‘dopa-mine reward pathway.’ It manifests in feelings similar to obsession, where we crave and pine till we reward ourselves giving a chance for our brain to finally get the neuroactivity going—that madness in love or puppy love.
This obsessive/reward dynamics happe-ns to be prevalent in addiction and obse-ssive compulsive disorders (OCD).
Sexual drive is also heightened in this phase but the main stars of those feelings are the sex hormones — the profile of which is significantly different bet-ween male and female. Testosterone is the main sex hormone, both in female and male biology. It is also associated with other traits like aggr-ession and body hair. Additionally, estradiols and a bunch of ot-her chemicals make up the female sex signals.
Long-lasting love aka true love or academically ‘pair-bonding’ involves the surge of oxytocin and vassopresin; these are frequently dubbed the empathy hormones, cuddle hormones, happy chemicals etc. It’s been observed in experiments that oxytocin has a strong positive link to sharper emotional cognition and less stress reactivity and sociability. These studies were performed by administering healthy adults with oxytocin doses and then testing its affect against a placebo group.
Research on vasopressin is not as expansive. There are a few reports on vasopressin having the opposite effects to oxytocin on social stress and cognition. Although both work closely together, especially in the part of the brain called amygdala. They promote fam-iliarity and even play the lead role in the euphoria of both male and female orgasm.
Along with pair bonding both of them enhance beh-aviours associated with maternal attachment, par-ental care and monogamy —the basic social pillars. This complex alchemy is regulated by an even more vast system and new discoveries are being made everyday.