Over the years there has been a sea change in the hearts and minds of people
about the vole.
Some put this down to the fact that
really there are much worse things out there - things with a fruity flavour and
those organisations which claim to do no evil but pay no taxes.
Now scientists have worked out why
people are feeling a lot more positive about the vole and it is all down to
brain chemistry and sex.
Researchers have confirmed that sex
induces permanent chemical modifications in the chromosomes, affecting the
expression of genes that regulate sexual and monogamous behaviour.
According to a study published in Nature Neuroscience,
prairie voles mate for life. The voles' pair bonding, sharing of parental roles
and egalitarian nest building in couples makes them a good model for
understanding the biology of monogamy and mating in humans.
Neuroscientist Mohamed Kabbaj and
his team at Florida State University in Tallahassee took voles which had been
housed together for six hours but had not mated. The researchers injected drugs
into the voles' brains near a region called the nucleus accumbens, which is
closely associated with the reinforcement of reward and pleasure.
Animals that had been permitted to
mate also had high levels of vasopressin and oxytocin receptors, confirming
that sex activates this brain area which leads to partner preference.
It is not just the drug though. It takes a drug
plus about six hours of living together for the Voles to think they have found
their dream partner. This might explain why Steve Ballmer has stayed as Microsoft's
CEO for so long.
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