The Neurochemistry of Love

Voles are a type of rodent whom scientists at Emory University and the University of Regensburg are studying to help figure out how love and relationships work neurophysiologically. What sets voles apart from other rodents is that they remain monogamous for almost their whole lives. This allows the scientists to study how vole relationships change the neurochemistry via stress hormones when two "lovers" are seperated. They accomplised this by pairing 6 male with 6 female voles for 5 days, which the article mentions is "an eternity for these short-lived rodents," and then seperating them taking blood samples and physical performance tests before and after seperation. They used a control of pairing 6 males to 6 other males.

What they found was that the rodents displayed higher levels of stress hormones and also performed sluggishly at the performance tests when compared to the control group. Also they seemed to be sad and depressed. The voles were in a sense "greiving" for their loss. A more exciting find was that by admistering the rodents with a drug that blocks a chemical called corticotropin-releasing factor, they could reverse this "greiving" effect. This shows that there may be a significant link between "grieving" and the corticotropin-releasing factor.

If this same phenomenum can be proven to exist in humans, it could soon be possible to admister a patient the corticotropin-releasing factor blocker to help them cope with the loss of a loved one.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-10/breaking-hard-do-especially-when-youre-vole