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Biochemistry

Valentine’s Day: The chemistry of love

Infographic on Valentine's Day chemistry, showing the chemical structures of dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline and oxytocin, and explaining how each contributes to the feeling of being in love.
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Happy Valentine’s Day! Here’s a brief look at some of the many chemicals involved in the feeling of love. For more on neurotransmitters in general, there’s also this post. Download link for this graphic below, along with links to some extra reading on the topic!

Note: This is an updated version of a graphic originally published in 2016.

The graphic in this article is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. See the site’s content usage guidelines.

References & Further Reading

8 replies on “Valentine’s Day: The chemistry of love”

This is a great graphic….but you should have included Oxytocin,,,,the LOVE hormone….let me know when you update this!!

Hi Todd, there’s a reason oxytocin is left out here; the three chemicals shown are those primarily involved in attraction. As I’m sure you’re probably already aware, oxytocin is more involved in attachment.

I do plan a more comprehensive post on the chemistry of love, which *will* include oxytocin. This was just a quick one for Valentine’s Day, and as it says, it just highlights “some of the many chemicals involved”. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time this week to put together a more comprehensive graphic, but there’s always next year!

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