Health Discovery: Is Love a Matter of Chemistry?

People looking for love could one day find romance with the help of a drug that acts on the brain, says Larry J. Young, professor of neuroscience at Atlanta’s Emory University.

Love as chemicals isn’t an enticing thought. But Young, writing in the Jan. 8 Nature, says brain hormones produce a warm feeling when released during bonding activities like breastfeeding and sex and could form the basis of a “pharmaceutical ‘love potion.’ ”

So is a love pill plausible? “Sure,” says Louis Cozolino, professor of psychology at Pepperdine University in California. It’s possible that a drug could be developed to “make people have the impulse and the desire to move closer to one another.” But, he adds, “you have to be careful how you define love.” Cozolino also says more research is needed on a love drug’s effects on humans. 

So far, Young’s studies on altering brain chemistry have used prairie voles, one of the very few animals to form long-term monogamous pairs.

Katharine Greider is a freelance writer in New York.