The healing properties of honey and animal intelligence were strong entrants for the Whittaker awards, but love won out in the end, writes Claire O'Connell.
YOU MIGHT THINK love comes from the heart, but much of it is driven by thrill-mongering neurochemicals in the brain. And, far from being a romantic folly, falling in love is central to nature's plans for keeping the human species going, according to Kerri Hastings, a third-year science student at NUI Maynooth.
Last week, she won the the 29th annual Whittaker awards at NUI Maynooth (NUIM) for her entertaining presentation on the biology of love, which included some insider tips for anyone taking a scientific approach to entrancing a partner.
"Love is an essential part of human functioning," says Hastings, who chose the topic as it is relevant to everyday life. "One of my lecturers had told us that all humans need to do is eat, survive and reproduce. So, if we have to reproduce, I started looking at the question of how does our body make us do it?"
The game-plan for falling and staying in love long enough to safely usher in the next generation breaks down into three phases, she explains. First is the hormone-driven phase of lust, where the objective is to mate with an appropriate partner. But constantly seeking successive partners is time-consuming, notes Hastings, so attraction developed, to help us identify a longer-term mate. And key to attraction is the neurotransmitter dopamine, a brain chemical that brings a rush of good feeling.
"Dopamine is the one that gives you euphoria and gets you high," says Hastings. "You fall in love with someone and your body makes more dopamine, you are intoxicated by them. The brain realises it has found a suitable mating partner and it says: 'You are going to stick with him and I'm going to make you.' And they become like your drug; you can't get enough of them."
Other chemicals involved in the love cocktail are norepinephrine, which boosts energy, and mood-altering serotonin. "You are getting obsessed," says Hastings. "Your brain is telling you, 'you are not going anywhere, you are going to stay with this person'."
And once the heady phase of attraction wears off, after somewhere between three and seven years, the body switches to a longer-term attachment mode, she explains. "In terms of evolution, we may have now produced an offspring and our bodies don't want us to get sick of our partner."
Hormones come back to the fore in this phase, and behaviours such as hugging, sexual contact, giving birth and breastfeeding release bond-forming oxytocin, notes Hastings.
Her light-hearted tips for attracting a partner include putting them on a rollercoaster, because people often misattribute an adrenaline-rush of fear for attraction.
For longer-term couples, she has a row-stopping strategy: "Gazing into each other's eyes lights up the reward centres in the brain. So, if you want to get over an argument quickly, look into their eyes and hold their hand and, apparently, scientifically it does make the row go away."
Other prize-winners in the Whittaker awards, which are run by NUIM's Biology Society, included Emma Cantwell, for her talk on how honey can improve wound healing, and Laurel Fogarty, for explaining how researchers look at animal intelligence.
The judging panel included two academics and a fourth-year student from NUIM, a representative from the sponsor, Enterprise Ireland, and this reporter.