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Researchers from the Imperial College London were able to determine that a love and sex hormone can get men in the mood for love. The hormone is said to affect the limbic brain system specifically regions in the brain connected to sexual arousal and romantic love.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, investigated the effects of the hormone, kisspeptin, on the limbic brain system. The limbic brain system is the part of the brain that is responsible for sexual and emotional behaviors. On the other hand, kisspeptin is a hormone recently identified as a reproductive hormone.

A total of 29 heterosexual young men participated in the study. To prevent variations in healthy physiology, the men conducted 2-day visits and participated in a randomized, double-blinded, 2-way crossover, placebo-controlled protocol. This way, the men were able to act as their own controls for the study.

The participants were injected with a dose of 1 nmol/kg/h of kisspetin-54. This dosage provides for steady-state levels of kisspeptin circulating in the body from 30 to 75 minutes. Functional neuroimaging and psychometric analysis were conducted to determine the effects of kisspeptin in the brain versus that of the placebo-control.

The results of the study show that the hormone kisspeptin boosts limbic brain activity in response to stimuli from sexual and couple-binding images. This response is correlated to the positive mood as a precursor for reproduction. In addition, kisspeptin also enhanced brain regions associated with reward, sexual drive, and sexual mood. The researchers also found functional significance with regards to sexual aversion and negative mood.

The study was able to determine that kisspeptin is not only an "in the mood for love" enhancer but also an important part of integrating sexual and emotional brain processing of the reproductive behaviors of human beings. Besides being a love and sex enhancer, the researchers are seeing the potential use of kisspeptin as a therapeutic agent for depression and psychosexual disorders.