为对上述疑惑刨根问底，就需要“挖”得更深一些。一位来自佐治亚州，亚特兰大Emory大学，研究社会附属关系的学者Larry Yong，他对此的解释是，田鼠(以及人类和其他动物)的大脑内具有一套奖赏系统用以鼓励它(他)们去做生物应该完成的行为。如若不然，动物将忘记进食，饮水和性行为，从而招致灾难性的后果。动物们不断重复这些行为是因为那使它们感到快乐。这种快感是一种称作多巴胺的化学物质在大脑中的释放使然。当雌性草原田鼠交配时，在大脑奖赏系统中枢，多巴胺水平会有50%的上升，而这已完全足够让这些“女士”们产生上面提到的那种快感。
Similarly, when a male rat has sex it feels good to him because of the dopamine. He learns that sex is enjoyable, and seeks out more of it based on how it happened the first time. But, in contrast to the prairie vole, at no time do rats learn to associate sex with a particular female. Rats are not monogamous.

与草原田鼠近似，雄性家鼠性交时，因多巴胺分泌同样会感到快乐。当它体验到性让它感到愉悦，便会参照初次经历去搜寻更多机会。但与草原田鼠相反，家鼠决不会学习把性与某个特定的雌性个体关联起来。毕竟家鼠不是“一夫一妻制”的哺乳动物。

This is where the vasopressin and oxytocin come in. They are involved in parts of the brain that help to pick out the salient features used to identify individuals. If the gene for oxytocin is knocked out of a mouse before birth, that mouse will become a social amnesiac and have no memory of the other mice it meets. The same is true if the vasopressin gene is knocked out.

抗利尿激素和催产素就是从这里进入这个科学传说的。它们参与了大脑一些部分的工作，以帮助选出用于辨别个体的显著特征。 如果在老鼠出生前，DNA中的抗利尿激素基因即被剔除, 那只老鼠将会成为一个社会性失忆个体，它也不会对遇到的其他老鼠留下任何印象。如果催产素基因缺损，以上命题同样成立。

The salient feature in this case is odour. Rats, mice and voles recognise each other by smell. Christie Fowler and her colleagues at Florida State University have found that exposure to the opposite sex generates new nerve cells in the brains of prairie voles—in particular in areas important to olfactory memory. Could it be that prairie voles form an olfactory “image” of their partners—the rodent equivalent of remembering a personality—and this becomes linked with pleasure?

这里的显著特征是气味。耗子、老鼠和野鼠靠嗅觉区分彼此。Christie Fowler和她的同事在佛罗里达州大学的研究中发现，把草原田鼠暴露给异性可使其大脑产生新的神经细胞——在对嗅觉记忆至关重要的一些区域尤其如此。人类是靠个性特征来记住某一个人的。那么草原田鼠会构造一个嗅觉“形像”去记住伴侣吗？这与性愉悦是否存在关联呢？

Dr Young and his colleagues suggest this idea in an article published last month in the Journal of Comparative Neurology. They argue that prairie voles become addicted to each other through a process of sexual imprinting mediated by odour. Furthermore, they suggest that the reward mechanism involved in this addiction has probably evolved in a similar way in other monogamous animals, humans included, to regulate pair-bonding in them as well.

Young博士和他的同事在上个月《比较神经学期刊》的文章中提到了这种想法。他们认为草原田鼠通过一个由气味做媒介的性烙印过程使配偶彼此沉溺于对方。此外，他们还提到，与这彼此沉溺上瘾相关的奖赏机制在其他的一夫一妻制动物（包括人类）生理系统中，或许也进化成了相似的方式，以规范他们的配偶联结关系。 ()