Dr. Tara Swart
speaker
511 appearances
9 recordings
7 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 24 May
Dr. Tara Swart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah.
These voles. It's a little mess. The voles are monogamous.
If they live in the prairie, but not if they live in a farm.
If they have all the food and abundance, they're just... And lots of female voles that they can go and visit.
Because they know that if they get one vole pregnant and she's left on her own to look after her young, they're going to survive because they're well sheltered. There's plenty of food for her to nip out and bring it back to the babies. Yeah. But in the prairie, if he was promiscuous, then the chances of his offspring dying are quite high because she can't defend the nest herself.
She can't find enough food for herself and then without help. And so let's extrapolate this. How does this help humans?
I think it depends on the vole.
Hang on, there is an answer to that. Okay. We test it through levels of oxytocin and vasopressin.
Yeah.
And actually, just to be serious, the research has done more to help with loneliness, grief, and heartbreak, but obviously it's got implications for dating.
So, because one of the things that we saw with the receptors in the brain is that if If I'm in, no, it's got to be the other way around. If you're in love with me, you've got more vasopressin receptors in your nucleus accumbens, which is on the reward circuitry. And then every time you see me, you get a reward.
And the longer that we've been dating and stay together and become closer, that reward becomes more intense every time you see me. However, if we then had a prolonged separation, time can down-regulate the effect of those receptors. So obviously there are implications for that in a breakup or grief, right? Right.
But one of the things I think is so, so important for dating is that if a couple are getting to know each other, and this is all on heterosexual couples in research, then as a woman is sexually interested and liking the guy and enjoying the dating, her oxytocin levels is like slowly, slowly starting to go up.
When they start actually having sex, she's gonna be releasing higher levels of oxytocin every time she orgasms, and that's gonna make her bond to the guy much more. If you have sex on the first date, The guy's vasopressin levels will plummet straight away and all he'll be interested in is testosterone. If you make him wait, his vasopressin and oxytocin levels go up.
And then when you do actually have sex, he's already bonded. So it's more likely to become part of a loving relationship.
Because the vasopressin levels drop as soon as he has sex.
So vasopressin is the one that makes the prairie voles monogamous. The higher the levels of that and that the receptors appear in the reward circuitry of your brain. And so basically if you see your partner in distress, it affects your brain, those neurons, and you want to comfort her through physical touch. So that's oxytocin. But...
If you haven't had time for those receptors to appear in the correct place to make you bond, then it goes back to lust. So what I say about love and relationships is that the genetics and the receptors will load the gun, but sexual activity will pull the trigger.
But if that's what you want, that's fine.
No, no. And don't say it's fine and it's fun if you actually want a long-term relationship and then be disappointed that they didn't want that too.
Showing 441–460 of 511 · page 23 of 26
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