IT’S hard to believe we could fail to recognise people with whom we’ve been
intimate. Yet geneticists in the US have created socially inept rodents with
just that failing. They provide the clearest picture yet of how a molecule
popularly known as the “love hormone” shapes relationships in mammals.
In animals as different as mice, voles, monkeys and humans, the hormone
oxytocin is released from the brain when relationships are being forged, such as
during mating or maternal nurturing. But just what oxytocin does has been
difficult to work out. When injected into an animal, for example, the hormone
can…
