Why do straight men devote so much attention to those big, bulbous bags of fat drooping form a women’s chest? Well scientists have never found a satisfactorily explanation for this phenomenon. But now, the neuroscientist Larry Young has found an explanation that he thinks ‘just makes a lot of sense.’

Young, a professor of psychiatry at Emory University, studies the neurological basis of complex social behaviors. He thinks that the human evolution has harnessed an ancient neural circuit, something that originally evolved to strengthen the mother-infant bond during breast-feeding, is also using the same brain circuitry to strengthen the bond between couples. The result: Men, like babies, love breasts.

When woman’s nipples are stimulated oxytocin is released – also know as the ‘love drug’

But how does this work? Well, when a woman’s nipples are stimulated during breast-feeding, a neurochemical oxytocin – know as the ‘love drug’ – floods her brain. This is helping her to focus her attention and affection on her baby. But recent research has shown that nipple stimulation also enhances sexual arousal to a great majority of women. Furthermore, it also activates the same brain areas as vaginal and clitoral stimulation.

Young states from this point of view that when a sexual partner touches, massages or nibbles a woman’s breast it triggers the release of oxytocin in the woman’s brain, just like what happens when she nurses a baby. From this perspective the oxytocin is helping the woman to focus het attention on her sexual partner and strengthening her desire to bond with this person.
In short it comes down to the fact that men can make themselves more desirable by stimulating a woman’s breasts during foreplay and sex. In a sense, evolution has made men want to do this.

But before all of you men go start rubbing the breasts of your partners like its Aladdin’s magic lamp. There is one important remark, Fran Mascia-Lees – an anthropologist at the Rutgers University – states it’s always important to note that whenever evolutionary biologists suggest a universal reason for a behavior and emotion: how about the cultural differences? Because in some African cultures, for example, women don’t cover their breasts and men don’t find them so attractive.

Although breast aren’t covered in other cultures, doesn’t mean stimulating them is not part of their foreplay

Well Young states that just because the breasts aren’t covered in these cultures it doesn’t mean that massaging them and stimulating them is not part of the foreplay in these cultures. But although this seems like a legit comment, as of yet there are not very many studies that look at breast stimulation during foreplay in an anthropological context.
So for now time and future studies will only show whether Young’s statement is true or not.