Whether it took place behind the bike sheds or at the school disco, your first romantic kiss is likely to remain etched in your memory for ever.
Most of us can recall 90 per cent of the details of the experience - a memory more vivid than losing their virginity, scientists say.
But the art is so complex that scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum has written a book about it.
Intimate moment: Most of us can recall 90 per cent of our first kiss - a memory more vivid than losing their virginity, scientists say
As part of the research she conducted an experiment measuring the magnetic current in the brain of men and women in response to different images of people kissing.
The kiss is more appreciated by women, it seems, although they usually get less satisfaction than they hoped from the action.
In The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, Kirshenbaum writes that men see kissing ‘as a means to an end’ and possibly with a ‘view to swapping other bodily fluids later’.
Women try to ‘extricate the significance of a relationship based on a single kiss and often that leads to miscommunication’.
Men are more aggressive kissers, as they are trying to pass on a ‘testosterone bomb’ to a lover.
However, testosterone passed on during sessions of smaller but frequent kisses stays in the body longer, and can push a woman to falling in love more quickly.
Young women usually get less satisfaction than they hoped from a kiss, although many men do not appear to notice, the book says.
The author, a researcher at the University of Texas, measured the magnetic current in brains of men and women in response to images of people kissing.
Her book also traces the history of the kiss from India 3,500 years ago.
Early in the 20th century English tourists spoke about shockingly open-mouthed kisses which were common in France and passionate scenes in Hollywood movies later changed the image of kissing in corners of the globe where it was formerly regarded as an affectionate gesture.
Kissing research featured in the book includes a 1950s U.S. study which discovered that 278 colonies of bacteria could be passed between kissers, although more than 95 per cent were harmless.
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