Rodent's brain provides UT researchers understanding of love and relationships
AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A small furry rodent could be key to understanding how we are changed by love. Researchers with the University of Texas are studying prairie voles to discover how coupling influences our brain and protects us from stress.
"I don't think folks appreciate just the extent to which this strange little fuzzy creature has shaped has shaped our understanding of human love," said Steven Phelps, a professor at UT Austin's Department of Integrative Biology.
Phelps' recent paper published in the scientific journal eLife explores how vole mating changes brain patterns. His team outfitted 200 voles with brain sensors. Half of the specimens were then partnered up and encouraged to mate, while the other half remained hopelessly single.
Over the course of the day, the partnered up voles mated continuously. The team captured brain activity during this time. They used this data to develop up a map of the brain, while also discovering three stages of brain activity: mating, bonding, and finally developing a stable relationship.
"We found about 70 unique regions that were all very active during mating and bonding, but were not active (in the control group). This allowed us to get a sense of the full range of brain circuits that are being brought in as animals may inform bonds," Phelps said.
These regions lit up the same in both male and female voles during the experiment. Ultimately, the team hopes to use this data to better understand how long term relationships can influence and mitigate stress.
Monogamy and the voles
Voles are unique in that they are one of the few monogamist species on the planet. Phelps says that fewer than 10% of mammals form permanent monogamy. "Those bonds are essential to us, they shape our ability to cope with stress and shape outcomes when we have faced with challenges in health and disease."
Voles form these relationships very very quickly. Over the course of a day, male and female voles mate over and over again. By the end, they are in a relationship and are bonded for life.
"The males and females move in together, they raise young together, they become territorial and patrol the territory together. And so they really sort of throw in together as, as a couple of sharing life together," Phelps said.
Much of our understanding of relationships, according to Professor Phelps, comes from vole studies. "We first learned of oxytocin and its role in bonding from the vole."
This experiment is the first to track brain patterns in voles during mating, according to the University of Texas.
The study’s co-authors are Morgan Gustison, Rodrigo Muñoz-Castañeda of Weill Cornell Medical College; and Pavel Osten of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.