"Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown that oxytocin - often referred to as "the love hormone" because of its importance in the formation and maintenance of strong mother-child and sexual attachments - is involved in a broader range of social interactions than previously understood....
"Oxytocin is the focus of intense scrutiny for its apparent roles in establishing trust between people, and has been administered to children with autism spectrum disorders in clinical trials. The new study...pinpoints a unique way in which oxytocin alters activity in a part of the brain that is crucial to experiencing the pleasant sensation neuroscientists call "reward."...
"Malenka and Dölen said they think their findings in mice are highly likely to generalize to humans because the brain's reward circuitry has been so carefully conserved over the course of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This extensive cross-species similarity probably stems from pleasure's absolutely essential role in reinforcing behavior likely to boost an individual's chance of survival and procreation."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-09-hormone-oxytocin-wider-role-social.html
Dölen, et al. (Sept. 2013). "Social reward requires coordinated activity of nucleus accumbens oxytocin and serotonin." Nature. Abstract.
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