Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we are approaching the creation of a “love-enhancement” drug to pep up flagging relationships, according to Dr Anders Sandberg, a neuroethicist at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.
Manipulation of oxytocin, known as the cuddle hormone, which would be key in any love-enhancement pill, already exists in prescription and illegal drug form. “You can sniff oxytocin using a nasal spray [for lactation problems] — and there seems to be evidence that [the class A drug] MDMA stimulates the oxytocin system,” says Dr Sandberg. “Some companies are probably working to figure out a way of modulating that.”
The first significant step towards the medicalisation of love becoming reality occurred in the 1990s, when scientists discovered that whether a prairie vole was
