An international team is studying the brain chemistry responsible for the complex feelings that actually draw people to a particular member of the opposite sex as well as help in keeping humans monogamous.

And, according to the scientists, love really could be a drug and one day the feelings can be induced by popping a pill or smelling a perfume.

“For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away,” team leader Prof Larry Young of Emory University in Georgia wrote in the 'Nature' journal.

Experiments have already shown a nasal squirt of the hormone oxytocin tunes people into others' emotions.

Websites are marketing products such as Enhanced Liquid Trust, a cologne-like mixture of oxytocin and chemical scents called pheromones “designed to boost the dating and relationship area of your life”.

Prof Young was quoted by 'The Daily Telegraph' as saying: “Although such products are unlikely to do anything other than boost users' confidence, studies are under way in Australia to determine whether an oxytocin spray might aid traditional marital therapy.

“The hormone interacts with the reward and reinforcement system driven by the neuro-transmitter dopamine -- the same circuitry that drugs such as nicotine, cocaine and heroine act on in humans to produce euphoria and addiction.