SOME people get their kicks from drugs and alcohol. Male birds might get equally high while wooing a mate, a euphoria they don’t feel when singing solo.
Neal Hessler and Ya-Chun Huang of the Riken Brain Science Institute in Saitama, Japan, found that when a male zebra finch sang directly to a potential mate, neurons were activated in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA.
Neurons in the equivalent human brain region are activated when people take drugs such as cocaine, which triggers the release of…
