posted June 17, 2004 01:49 PM         

Report: Rodents may offer insight to monogamy
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
Could the day come when a simple bit of gene therapy might cure infidelity?

Prairie voles are social animals that often mate for life, unlike meadow voles.
Yerkes National Primate Research Center

In a report out today, researchers say they were able to perform that bit of molecular magic on the meadow vole, a mouse-like rodent. The genes involved are the same in humans, they say, though the mechanism is likely to be far more complex.

By transferring a single gene to the pleasure center of the naturally promiscuous male vole, researchers at Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta were able to make it happily monogamous, they say in a letter in the journal Nature.

They're not actually suggesting gene therapy can fix human infidelity, but the research has important implications for brain disorders, such as autism, that make it difficult for people to bond with others.

"It really highlights the connections between social behavior and gene expression," says Gene Robinson, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved in the study. He calls the research "exciting."

In studying the brain chemistry of the two mammals, researchers found that when the monogamous prairie vole mates, the pleasure hormone dopamine is released in its brain. The receptors for that dopamine are located in the brain's pleasure center, which also happens to be where the receptors for the hormone vasopressin are located. And vasopressin is linked to social learning.

"They recognize that this good feeling is associated with that particular female," says Larry Young, a psychiatry professor at Emory University in Atlanta.

In contrast, the dopamine and vasopressin receptors are not located together in the promiscuous meadow vole. So when they mate, "they don't make that specific connection to a specific female, they just think that mating feels good," he says.

When Young and his team took the prairie vole vasopressin receptor gene and injected it into the pleasure center of a meadow vole, the meadow vole suddenly preferred just one partner.

Scientists can't see the receptors in humans yet. But it seems likely, says Young, that this gene is somehow linked to human's ability to form social bonds with others. Other studies have found links between variations in the gene and autism.
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Very offensive stuff, IMO.

Now. Food for thought.
If we truly believe that we are all One, in the beginning and end...that we are only separate by perception...

Then isn't every act of sex, masturbation?
One lover, two, six...doesn't matter in the end, if we are all One.

Oh, look! Look at all the worms squirming about! Come back to the can, little dudes.

posted June 17, 2004 05:09 PM         

I read up on vasopressin and being an antidiuretic, it's good for regulating water back into the body, like for hot days - but that would naturally lead to more pressure in the arteries cos of the extra liquid - think I interpreted that correctly?

Anyhoo.. pros and cons to everything

Now; as for every act of sex being masturbation. I see where you're comin from. It's true, you can percieve everything as one and then come to the conclusion that we are having sex with ourselves. However, masturbation is a different act and is (usually) acted out alone.. sooo, I think we're all exempt from being spiritually promiscuous! We must have had many unions of souls in our time though..Oooer

Good topic trill.. trying to reply whilst keeping an eye on a genes programme whilst typing, so hope this makes sense!