Meeting your lover triggers a dopamine flood, motivating bonding. New study by University of Colorado Boulder on prairie voles reveals a biological signature explaining our desire for specific connections. Published in Current Biology, it unveils dopamine’s critical role in sustaining love, shedding light on human brain mechanisms for intimate relationships and dealing with their loss.
Donaldson said, “As humans, our entire social world is basically defined by different degrees of selective desire to interact with different people, whether it’s your romantic partner or your close friends. This research suggests that certain people leave a unique chemical imprint on our brain that drives us to maintain these bonds over time.”
A new study using prairie voles shows that love activates the brain’s reward center. Using advanced neuroimaging, researchers tracked real-time brain activity as voles reunited with their partners. The nucleus accumbens, responsible for motivating rewarding behaviors, lit up, indicating dopamine release.
When the reunion involved a life partner, the brain ‘lit up like a rave,’ but with a random vole, the glow diminished. This provides a biological explanation for why we’re motivated to be with certain people and how dopamine plays a crucial role in sustaining love.
Pierce said, “This suggests that not only is dopamine important for motivating us to seek out our partner but there’s more dopamine coursing through our reward center when we are with our partner than when we are with a stranger.”
Prairie voles, known for lifelong mating, offer hope for the heartbroken. In an experiment, separated vole couples, after a month apart, reunited with diminished dopamine surge. This ‘reset’ in the brain allows them to form new bonds, showing resilience in overcoming past relationships.
For those who’ve endured heartbreak, the brain may have a built-in defense against endless unrequited love, as shown in prairie voles. While more research is needed for humans, the study could have implications for those facing challenges in forming relationships or overcoming loss, such as prolonged grief disorder. Understanding healthy bonds in the brain may lead to new therapies for mental illnesses affecting the social world, providing hope for improved well-being.
This neuroscientific exploration into love’s impact on the brain significantly contributes to understanding the intricate mechanisms of desire and bonding. By unraveling the neural intricacies of love in prairie voles, the study opens avenues for future research to develop therapies for mental health conditions affecting social connections.
Journal reference:
- Autumn Peterson, Carina Baskett, et al., Transforming yeast into a facultative photoheterotroph via expression of vacuolar rhodopsin. Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.044.