I Love You From the Bottom of My Brain: The Neurobiology Behind Love :: Biology Essays Research Papers

I Love You From the Bottom of My Brain: The Neurobiology Behind Love You're at a typical weekend party. You spot someone across the room. They look over in your direction. "Wow, they're so beautiful," you think. You want desperately to go over and talk to them, but at the very thought of it, your heart starts racing and your palms begin to sweat. Looking over at them again, you see that amazingly enough they are coming over to you. Even before speaking to them, you feel like you have just fallen in love. Is this feeling really love at first sight? Or is it merely the release of hormones in the brain? What causes the feeling of being in love? How can we know for sure if we really are in love? Love is one of the strongest and most elusive emotions. Nearly every person seeks to experience the feeling of being in love. And once it is achieved, one's life is forever changed. Yet, most people would have extreme difficulty describing what exactly love is, how they know for sure that they are in love, or why love is so universally important. Understanding the neurobiology behind love might help to give us a more clear perspective on social bonding and raises the question of whether love is nothing more than the release of certain chemicals. The hormone oxytocin plays a significant role in many animals' instinct to love and form social bonds. In fact, it has been called jokingly, "the cuddle hormone." (1) Oxytocin is a small protein composed of nine amino acids. It is produced in the hypothalamus and is released by the pituitary gland. (2) Oxytocin is also produced in the ovaries of women and the testes of men. However, the hormone's most well known function is specific to females. (3) First, it plays an integral role in the delivery of a baby. When a woman goes into labor, oxytocin levels increase. This stimulates contraction in the smooth muscle of the uterine walls, thereby facilitating delivery. Secondly, oxytocin plays a role in milk letdown in nursing mothers. Milk is initially released into small sacs, called alveoli, which are surrounded by smooth muscle cells. Oxytocin stimulates contractions of this smooth muscle, causing the milk to be released to the mouth of a nursing baby. (3) Lastly, and most importantly, oxytocin causes the formation of maternal behavior.