If you feel miserable after a bad break up, don’t worry about it. You will definitely get over it because evolution has wired the human body to do just that, say scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
This all has to do with the human sense of desire.
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The scientists say they may have found a “chemical imprint of desire.” The same hormone underlying cravings for sugar, nicotine and cocaine, say the researchers, “likely infuses your brain’s reward center,” thereby impelling one to just get back out there and find someone knew to take the other person’s place. This, they say, is the same reason people stay in a relationship to begin with.
This hormone is dopamine. The Cleveland Clinic explains that dopamine is a type of monoamine neurotransmitter. It’s made in your brain and acts as a chemical messenger, communicating messages between nerve cells in your brain and your brain and the rest of your body.
Dopamine also acts as a hormone. Dopamine, epinephrine and norepinephrine are the main catecholamines (a label based on having part of the same molecular structure). These hormones are made by your adrenal gland, a small hat-shaped gland located on top of each of your kidneys. Dopamine is also a neurohormone released by the hypothalamus in your brain.
“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,” said senior author of the study Zoe Donaldson, associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at CU Boulder.
The study was published Jan. 12 in the journal Current Biology. It centers on prairie voles, which have the distinction of being among the 3% to 5% of mammals that form monogamous pair bonds.
“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,” said Donaldson. “This research suggests that certain people leave a unique chemical imprint on our brain that drives us to maintain these bonds over time.”
For the study, Donaldson and her colleagues used state-of-the art neuroimaging technology to measure, in real time, what happens in the brain as a vole tries to get to its partner. In one scenario, the vole had to press a lever to open a door to the room where her partner was. In another, she had to climb over a fence for that reunion.
