Prairie voles, the furry rodents found in tall-grass fields in the US Midwest, may help scientists unlock age-old mysteries underlying human desire for companionship, sex and even the accumulation of wealth.
Research on the animal’s genetic makeup is uncovering more about human behavior than does the study of just about any other species, said Larry Young, a social-neurobiology researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. Voles have become the focus of scientists because they mate monogamously, unlike rats and monkeys. Voles also produce oxytocin, a hormone that spurs mothers to bond with babies, and dopamine, which fuels human cravings and euphoria.
Within months, Young and his colleagues will begin mapping the prairie vole’s genome after getting the animal approved for sequencing by the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The findings will advance understanding of the relationships between genes, the brain and behavior, and may lead to new therapies for autism and other social disorders, said Young, who has studied voles for 15 years.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
“Dopamine is involved in all kinds of rewards, things that make us feel good: eating, drinking, winning a football game, making money, buying a new car,” Young said.
Oxytocin is that reward of being around friends or a mate. There are times when you have the combination of the two — like when you are making love.
Oxytocin in the form of pitocin is frequently given to mothers during or after childbirth to speed delivery and reduce hemorrhaging, and is being used experimentally to treat autism, said Sue Carter, a biologist and co-director of the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has studied voles for three decades.
Companies are trying to capitalize on oxytocin’s role in bonding and trust. Vero Labs LLC in Boca Raton, Florida, sells an oxytocin spray it calls Liquid Trust, and Genesis Biolabs Inc in Tucson, Arizona, markets a bonding test kit for humans that looks for the AVPR1a receptor gene that is also involved in prairie vole social behavior.
Like voles, some people have a genetic tendency to be more social and introduce their friends to each other, while others tend to keep to themselves, said Nicholas Christakis, co-author of Connected, which explains why behaviors are contagious and why the rich keep getting richer.
A similar group of genes influences pro-social behavior in prairie voles and us, said Christakis, who also teaches health-care policy, sociology and medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. There are advantages to these social networks. If you want to hunt a mastodon, it’s better to have your friends along.
The first time prairie voles mate, the chemistry of their brains is altered and they form a lasting bond with each other, even after they stop producing offspring, Young said. Some related species, such as meadow voles, aren’t monogamous, he said.
This flip-flopping of the neurochemistry in the brain prevents them from forming that kind of bond again, said Young, who organized a gathering of vole researchers in February that drew 90 attendees to Emory.
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