The Neurobiology of Love: Prairie voles are providing surprising new insights into how social bonds form.

BEYOND OXYTOCIN AND VASOPRESSIN The discovery that the oxytocin receptor is not strictly necessaryfor prairie vole bonding demonstrates that however important thegenes encoding oxytocin, vasopressin and their receptors may be,they are not the whole story. ANIMAL BEHAVIOR THE PRAIRIE VOLE IS A SMALL MIDWESTERN RODENT KNOWN FOR SHACKING UPand settling down, a tendency that is rare among mammals. Workon prairie voles, however, inspired neuropsychologists to look atmore ancient structures, in the same reward regions implicated inprairie vole bonding. [Extracted from the article]