After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding — and, not incidentally, explaining humans’ peculiar erotic fascination with breasts

Poetry it is not. Nor is it particularly romantic. But reducing love to its component parts helps us to understand human sexuality, and may lead to drugs that enhance or diminish our love for another

we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine

human love is set off by a “biochemical chain of events” that originally evolved in ancient brain circuits involving mother-child bonding

Some of our sexuality has evolved to stimulate that same oxytocin system to create female-male bonds

explain a couple of differences between humans and less monogamous mammals: females’ desire to have sex even when they are not fertile, and males’ erotic fascination with breasts

could help build long-term bonds through a “cocktail of ancient neuropeptides