Yrys
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Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss, By JOHN TIERNEY
In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand unified
theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding —
and, not incidentally, explaining humans’ peculiar erotic fascination with breasts —
Dr. Young predicts that it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak
a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink.
That’s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion if you
took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as I see it, is that
we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from
making an infatuated ass of yourself. Although this love vaccine isn’t mentioned in
Dr. Young’s essay, when I raised the prospect he agreed it could also be in the offing.
Could any discovery be more welcome? This is what humans have sought ever since
Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past the Sirens. Long
before scientists identified neuroreceptors, long before Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas
wedding or any of Larry King’s seven marriages, it was clear that love was a
dangerous disease.
Love was correctly identified as a potentially fatal chemical imbalance in the
medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde, who accidentally consumed a love potion
and turned into hopeless addicts. Even though they realized that her husband,
the king, would punish adultery with death, they had to have their love fix.
They couldn’t guess what was in the potion, but then, they didn’t have the benefit
of Dr. Young’s research with prairie voles at the Yerkes National Primate Research
Center at Emory University. These mouselike creatures are among the small minority
of mammals — less than 5 percent — who share humans’ propensity for monogamy.
When a female prairie vole’s brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that
produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she’ll quickly
become attached to the nearest male. A related hormone, vasopressin, creates urges
for bonding and nesting when it is injected in male voles (or naturally activated by sex).
After Dr. Young found that male voles with a genetically limited vasopressin response
were less likely to find mates, Swedish researchers reported that men with a similar
genetic tendency were less likely to get married. In his Nature essay, Dr. Young
speculates that human love is set off by a “biochemical chain of events” that originally
evolved in ancient brain circuits involving mother-child bonding, which is stimulated in
mammals by the release of oxytocin during labor, delivery and nursing.
“Some of our sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create
female-male bonds,” Dr. Young said, noting that sexual foreplay and intercourse
stimulate the same parts of a woman’s body that are involved in giving birth and nursing.
This hormonal hypothesis, which is by no means proven fact, would help explain a couple
of differences between humans and less monogamous mammals: females’ desire to
have sex even when they are not fertile, and males’ erotic fascination with breasts.
More frequent sex and more attention to breasts, Dr. Young said, could help build
long-term bonds through a “cocktail of ancient neuropeptides,” like the oxytocin
released during foreplay or orgasm.
Researchers have achieved similar results by squirting oxytocin into people’s nostrils —
not terribly sexy, but it seems to enhance feelings of trust and empathy. Although
Dr. Young is not concocting any love potions (he’s looking for drugs to improve the
social skills of people with autism and schizophrenia), he said there could soon be
drugs that increase people’s urge to fall in love.
“It would be completely unethical to give the drug to someone else,” he said, “but
if you’re in a marriage and want to maintain that relationship, you might take a little
booster shot yourself every now and then. Even now it’s not such a far-out possibility
that you could use drugs in conjunction with marital therapy.”
I see some potential here, but also big problems. Suppose you took that potion and
then suddenly felt an urge to run off with the next person you spent any time with,
like your dentist? What if you went to a business convention and then, like an
artificially stimulated prairie vole, bonded with the nearest stranger? What if, like
Tristan, you developed an overwhelming emotional connection to your boss’s spouse?
Even if the effects could somehow be targeted to the right partner, would you want
to start building a long-term relationship with a short-term drug? What happens when
it wears off?
A love vaccine seems simpler and more practical, and already there are some drugs
that seem to inhibit people’s romantic impulses (see TierneyLab, at www.nytimes.com/tierneylab).
Such a vaccine has already been demonstrated in prairie voles.
“If we give an oxytocin blocker to female voles, they become like 95 percent of other
mammal species,” Dr. Young said. “They will not bond no matter how many times they
mate with a male or hard how he tries to bond. They mate, it feels really good and they
move on if another male comes along. If love is similarly biochemically based, you should
in theory be able to suppress it in a similar way.”
I doubt many people would want to permanently suppress love, but a temporary vaccine
could come in handy. Spouses going through midlife crises would not be so quick to elope
with their personal trainers; elderly widowers might consult their lawyers before marrying
someone resembling Anna Nicole Smith. Love is indeed a many-splendored thing, but
sometimes we all need to tie ourselves to the mast.
In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand unified
theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding —
and, not incidentally, explaining humans’ peculiar erotic fascination with breasts —
Dr. Young predicts that it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak
a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink.
That’s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion if you
took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as I see it, is that
we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from
making an infatuated ass of yourself. Although this love vaccine isn’t mentioned in
Dr. Young’s essay, when I raised the prospect he agreed it could also be in the offing.
Could any discovery be more welcome? This is what humans have sought ever since
Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past the Sirens. Long
before scientists identified neuroreceptors, long before Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas
wedding or any of Larry King’s seven marriages, it was clear that love was a
dangerous disease.
Love was correctly identified as a potentially fatal chemical imbalance in the
medieval tale of Tristan and Isolde, who accidentally consumed a love potion
and turned into hopeless addicts. Even though they realized that her husband,
the king, would punish adultery with death, they had to have their love fix.
They couldn’t guess what was in the potion, but then, they didn’t have the benefit
of Dr. Young’s research with prairie voles at the Yerkes National Primate Research
Center at Emory University. These mouselike creatures are among the small minority
of mammals — less than 5 percent — who share humans’ propensity for monogamy.
When a female prairie vole’s brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that
produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she’ll quickly
become attached to the nearest male. A related hormone, vasopressin, creates urges
for bonding and nesting when it is injected in male voles (or naturally activated by sex).
After Dr. Young found that male voles with a genetically limited vasopressin response
were less likely to find mates, Swedish researchers reported that men with a similar
genetic tendency were less likely to get married. In his Nature essay, Dr. Young
speculates that human love is set off by a “biochemical chain of events” that originally
evolved in ancient brain circuits involving mother-child bonding, which is stimulated in
mammals by the release of oxytocin during labor, delivery and nursing.
“Some of our sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create
female-male bonds,” Dr. Young said, noting that sexual foreplay and intercourse
stimulate the same parts of a woman’s body that are involved in giving birth and nursing.
This hormonal hypothesis, which is by no means proven fact, would help explain a couple
of differences between humans and less monogamous mammals: females’ desire to
have sex even when they are not fertile, and males’ erotic fascination with breasts.
More frequent sex and more attention to breasts, Dr. Young said, could help build
long-term bonds through a “cocktail of ancient neuropeptides,” like the oxytocin
released during foreplay or orgasm.
Researchers have achieved similar results by squirting oxytocin into people’s nostrils —
not terribly sexy, but it seems to enhance feelings of trust and empathy. Although
Dr. Young is not concocting any love potions (he’s looking for drugs to improve the
social skills of people with autism and schizophrenia), he said there could soon be
drugs that increase people’s urge to fall in love.
“It would be completely unethical to give the drug to someone else,” he said, “but
if you’re in a marriage and want to maintain that relationship, you might take a little
booster shot yourself every now and then. Even now it’s not such a far-out possibility
that you could use drugs in conjunction with marital therapy.”
I see some potential here, but also big problems. Suppose you took that potion and
then suddenly felt an urge to run off with the next person you spent any time with,
like your dentist? What if you went to a business convention and then, like an
artificially stimulated prairie vole, bonded with the nearest stranger? What if, like
Tristan, you developed an overwhelming emotional connection to your boss’s spouse?
Even if the effects could somehow be targeted to the right partner, would you want
to start building a long-term relationship with a short-term drug? What happens when
it wears off?
A love vaccine seems simpler and more practical, and already there are some drugs
that seem to inhibit people’s romantic impulses (see TierneyLab, at www.nytimes.com/tierneylab).
Such a vaccine has already been demonstrated in prairie voles.
“If we give an oxytocin blocker to female voles, they become like 95 percent of other
mammal species,” Dr. Young said. “They will not bond no matter how many times they
mate with a male or hard how he tries to bond. They mate, it feels really good and they
move on if another male comes along. If love is similarly biochemically based, you should
in theory be able to suppress it in a similar way.”
I doubt many people would want to permanently suppress love, but a temporary vaccine
could come in handy. Spouses going through midlife crises would not be so quick to elope
with their personal trainers; elderly widowers might consult their lawyers before marrying
someone resembling Anna Nicole Smith. Love is indeed a many-splendored thing, but
sometimes we all need to tie ourselves to the mast.
