Seductive chemicals are hidden in sloppy kisses, scientists say, but even the most chaste caress can spark an intense hormonal response.
“Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouth and that suggests to me that they are unconsciously trying to transfer testosterone to trigger the sex drive in women,” said Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Kissing can certainly open the door to sex, Fisher said.
But it can also close it: a recent study found that the first kiss was the “kiss of death” for budding relationships.
“Should you drool more? You don’t want to turn off your partner,” Fisher said.
Kissing is a natural instinct that likely serves a number of evolutionary purposes, said Fisher, one of the leading experts in the biology of love and attraction.
Men’s preference for sloppy kisses with lots of tongue may help them overcome their poor sense of smell and taste.
“What they might be doing is trying to pick up the estrogen cycle in a woman to figure out the degree of her fertility,” she said.
Kissing also stimulates an enormous part of the brain, but love can do even more, according to an experiment Fisher ran with MRI brain scans.
Fisher found people who had recently fallen in love had high levels of activity in the reward system in the brain that produces dopamine and is linked to craving, motivation, focused attention and goal-oriented behavior.
“Rejected people showed a great deal of activity in several areas directly associated with addiction,” Fisher told reporters gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Long-term lovers showed activity in the same “reward” area as new lovers, but also showed activity in a region associated with the feeling of calm that produces the chemical serotonin and in the area that produces oxytocin, which is associated with pair-bonding.
Kissing raises oxytocin levels among men and also lowers stress hormones in both men and women, says a study that was to be presented at the conference on Saturday.
Wendy Hill, a neuroscience professor at Lafayette College, tested the saliva and blood of 15 couples who spend 15 minutes either kissing or holding hands and talking.
She found that the women had significantly higher levels of the pair-bonding hormone than the men before the experiment started, but those levels dropped when they were tested after the experiment was completed.
It was a surprising result, which Hill said could be attributed to the fact that the test was run in the college’s health center and that a bit of soft music and some flowers were not enough to get the women in the mood.
“We’re running the setting again in a more romantic setting,” Hill said. “It’s a secluded room in an academic building. It has a couch, it has flowers, it has candles — electric because of fire hazard issues — and we have light jazz playing.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS