‘Desire chemical’ that makes us crave certain people more than others discovered
Most of us have felt a yearning for someone at some point in our lives, a teenage sweetheart, our other halves, even a celebrity crush, but now researchers say there may be a biological reason behind our infatuation with certain people.
Experts have said that the feeling of desire, which causes us to crave certain people more than others, has a biological signature behind it. Some people can leave a unique chemical imprint on our brain, which is what drives us to form and maintain close relationships, according to a new study on voles.
It all comes down to dopamine seemingly released in the brain when we are on our way to meet our true love that can play a critical role in keeping desire alive. But there is also hope for the heartbroken as the study seemed to show that the chemical imprint fades if you have no contact with the person for a while - mean time really is a healer.
“What we have found, essentially, is a biological signature of desire that helps us explain why we want to be with some people more than other people,” explained associate professor Zoe Donaldson from the University of Colorado Boulder.
There might be a chemical reason people are drawn to certain individuals and not others (Getty Images)“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.”
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The team used neuroimaging technology on prairie voles as they tried to reach their partners to achieve their findings. The cute rodents made expert candidates as they are among the three to five per cent of mammals that form monogamous pair bonds.
Researchers allowed the voles to partner off and then put each member of the couple in a different room and monitored their brains while they tried to find their way to each other. Each time the sensor detects a spurt of dopamine it would light up, and graduate student Anne Pierce described that when the pair were reunited it “lit up like a rave. And the party continued as they snuggled and sniffed one another.”
In contrast when a random vole was placed on the other side of the door/wall the sensor would dim. Ms Pierce added: “This suggests that not only is dopamine really important for motivating us to seek out our partner, but there’s actually more dopamine coursing through our reward centre when we are with our partner than when we are with a stranger.”
The researchers also discovered that there is hope for the heartbroken, as after time apart the brain resets ready to form a new bond. To discover this the vole couple was kept apart for four weeks—an eternity in the life of a rodent —and when reunited the dopamine surge had almost vanished.
In their brains the desire was gone, and their former partner was indistinguishable from any other vole on a hormonal level. Dr Donaldson added: “We think of this as sort of a reset within the brain that allows the animal to now go on and potentially form a new bond.
“This could be good news for humans who have undergone a painful break-up, or even lost a spouse, suggesting that the brain has an inherent mechanism to protect us from endless unrequited love.”
The team hope that they will get to explore this research further and see exactly how well the results translate to humans. Dr Donaldson concluded: “The hope is that by understanding what healthy bonds look like within the brain, we can begin to identify new therapies to help the many people with mental illnesses that affect their social world.”
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