love serums- how to get an interest to commit

ANNE MCILROY
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
January 8, 2009 at 8:58 AM EST
She's a woman in love, but her prince isn't ready to settle down. So she crumbles a love drug into his beer, and soon he is talking about marriage and children.
Love potions have long been the stuff of fairy tales, but a U.S. scientist who studies the brain chemistry of social relationships says real-life versions may not be far off.
"Recent advances in the biology of pair bonding mean it won't be long before an unscrupulous suitor could slip a pharmaceutical 'love potion' into our drink," writes Larry Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, in an essay in today's edition of the journal Nature.
Dr. Young and his colleagues are not love doctors, but they are trying to tease out the role genes and hormones play in social bonding in mammals. They hope their work leads to new ways to treat autism, a condition that can disrupt social relationships.
And when it comes to a "love potion," there are ethical as well as strategic issues to consider, Dr. Young said in a telephone interview.
What happens if a partner finds out he or she has been drugged to the altar? Or if the effect of such a potion wears off?
"It is one thing if you voluntarily use something like this to enhance your marriage, but if you are trying to give it to someone else, that is unethical," he said.
The science of love may be a sideline for the researchers, but in 2004 they made headlines when they reported that they had turned naturally promiscuous voles into monogamous ones by tinkering with a single gene.
Since then, there have been a number of steps toward a commitment pill.
Humans have the same gene - known as AVPR1A - that Dr. Young works with in voles. In September, Swedish researchers reported that men with a particular version of it are twice as likely to remain unmarried as other men. Guys with the gene who had tied the knot were twice as likely to report a recent crisis in their marriage.
How could one gene influence something as complex as a romantic relationship?
In voles, it plays a role in how the male brain responds to a hormone called vasopressin, which is associated with pleasure and reward. It is released after they have sex.
Voles have receptors that help the brain process vasopressin. Those with more of the receptors are more likely to be monogamous.
The gene Dr. Young is studying affects the number of receptors the animals have. Prairie voles tend to get attached to one female; they have more receptors. Meadow voles like to play the field; they have fewer of them. Dr. Young and his colleagues were able to change meadow voles' natural propensity to philander by getting the gene to produce more receptors.
Scientists aren't sure exactly how AVPR1A works in humans.
"If there are more receptors in certain parts of the brain that elicit certain types of emotion, it would make that individual feel differently when they are with another person," Dr. Young said.
A love potion would somehow alter this circuitry. It could be as simple as giving men more vasopressin, he says. But it might not be that easy; the number and location of the receptors might be more important than the amount of hormone.
It is a little bit more straightforward with the so-called love hormone, oxytocin. Produced during orgasm and childbirth, the hormone promotes bonding.
In prairie voles, oxytocin is released in the brains of females during mating. Dr. Young says a female with a brain infused with the hormone rapidly becomes attached to the nearest male.
The hormone also plays a role in social bonding in humans. Experiments have shown that people given a nasal squirt of oxytocin are more trusting and more in tune with the emotions of others.
But does it offer a chemical fix for romantic difficulties?
At the University of Sydney in Australia, researchers are conducting an experiment to see if sniffing oxytocin can help couples during marital counselling.
There are probably many hormones - and genes - that affect pair bonding in humans, and one day genetic screening could offer a new way to assess a prospective partner.
"If, in 20 years, we could come up with a list of 25 genes that predicted 50 per cent of the variability in human relationships, then you could have a decent predictor of relationship quality," Dr. Young said.
But DNA testing could thwart Cupid. Genes don't predict how an individual will behave, he says. At best, genetic screening would help people make a better guess about what the future could hold.
What if you find your soulmate, Dr. Young asked, but end the relationship because genetic profiling suggests they may not stick around?
"You could miss out on your perfect partner."