A team of scientists put forward their latest findings on Wednesday, in which they claim that when someone loses or separates from a near one, then brain chemicals play a vital role in dealing with the loss. They further informed that this discovery can actually lead to some new treatment for people suffering from depression.

The tests were conducted by a team constituting of Oliver Bosch of the University of Regensburg in Germany, his colleagues and researchers from Emory University in Atlanta. They took a specific type of rodent for experiment, called prairie voles, which are found in North America and are well known for developing long-lasting bonds with their mates.

The team separated these rodents either from their siblings or from their mates, following which; they analyzed their anxiety and depression levels. The team was astonished to find that just after four days, the voles separated from their siblings, showed high-levels of anxiety, whereas those who had lost their mates suffered from depression.

Following this, they became quite lazy, inactive and passive. They did not struggle to swim when they were put into water, and did not react when they were held from their tails by the scientists.

Other than this, it was also found that those voles that had developed strong bonds with their partners, had higher levels of a brain chemical called corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), a neurotransmitter involved in the stress response.

Surprisingly, the group of prairie voles which were given a compound to avoid the brain from receiving signals coming from the chemical did not experience the above said symptoms.

The National Institutes of Health and other research organizations funded this study, which appeared in the Neuropsychopharmacology journal.