The Poetry of Love and Sex Meets the Inner Workings of Your Brain

Newswise — The essence of love and sex -- complementary, complex and vitally important parts of romantic relationships -- has been captured in prose that awakens and revitalizes the reader. Professor Peter Coviello, English professor at Bowdoin College, teaches a secton called Love and Sex in his poetry class.

Coviello's research interests and expertise are in Intimacy and nationality in American literature and culture; the intimate life of race; race and psychoanalysis; American histories of sexuality, with particular focus on children and sexuality; music and vernacular utopias in American national life.

Coviello is the author of "Intimacy in America: Dreams of Affiliation in Antebellum Literature" (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) and has previous experience with the media.

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Rick Thompson has expertise in emotional interactions between people and can speak to how the brain's chemistry affects how we attach to one another. Thompson teaches courses in hormones and behavior, social behavior and behavioral neuroscience.

"There is a chemical produced within the brain called oxytocin that promotes trust and attachment, and one of the things that promotes its release within the brain is sexual contact, particularly orgasm," says Professor Thompson. "Thus, the strengthening of attachments through sex or, more romantically, the deepening of love, may be a result of the actions of this brain chemical."