Okay, oxytocin. But what about alcohol?

You are what your brain produces.

Writing in the respected scientific journal Nature, Professor Young argues that love can be explained by a series of neurochemical events in specific brain areas.

If it is true, he says, people will no longer have to rely on oysters or chocolates to create a loving mood.

Instead, it will be possible for scientists to develop aphrodisiacs - chemicals that would make people fall in love with the first person they see.

And for those who have fallen in love with someone they shouldn't have, there could be an antidote to unrequited love.

And what your nose sniffs.

Denise Chen, assistant professor of psychology at Rice, looked at how the brains of female volunteers processed and encoded the smell of sexual sweat from men. The results of the experiment indicated the brain recognizes chemosensory communication, including human sexual sweat.

Scientists have long known that animals use scent to communicate. 

Chen's study represents an effort to expand knowledge of how humans’ sense of smell complement their more powerful senses of sight and hearing.

The experiment directly studied natural human sexual sweat using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Nineteen healthy female subjects inhaled olfactory stimuli from four sources, one of which was sweat gathered from sexually aroused males.

The research showed that several parts of the brain are involved in processing the emotional value of the olfactory information. These include the right fusiform region, the right orbitofrontal cortex and the right hypothalamus.

"With the exception of the hypothalamus, neither the orbitofrontal cortex nor the fusiform region is considered to be associated with sexual motivation and behavior," Chen said. "Our results imply that the chemosensory information from natural human sexual sweat is encoded more holistically in the brain rather than specifically for its sexual quality."

Humans are evolved to respond to salient socioemotional information. 

Distinctive neural mechanisms underlie the processing of emotions in facial and vocal expressions. The findings help explain the neural mechanism for human social chemosignals.

Here I thought that taking a shower and buying chocolates enhanced your chances of getting lucky.

Here's a picture of some guy about to get lucky:

 

Love is in the air!