Oxytocin

Oxytocin blocks alcohol intoxication symptoms

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Vasopressin

This joint 2015 Australian/German rodent study found that oxytocin bound to the brain receptors that cause loss of motor control with alcohol intoxication, and prevented rats from displaying these symptoms:

“While oxytocin might reduce your level of intoxication, it won’t actually change your blood alcohol level,” Dr Bowen said. “This is because the oxytocin is preventing the alcohol from accessing the sites in the brain that make you intoxicated, it is not causing the alcohol to leave your system any faster.”

Vasopressin didn’t have the same effect.

The level of alcohol used to produce this finding was roughly equivalent to a human drinking a bottle of wine over a few hours. Oxytocin didn’t prevent loss of motor control when the equivalent of a bottle of vodka was administered because the excess ethanol found its way into other brain receptors and put the rats to sleep.

The study showed oxytocin acting in its original functionalities such as water regulation rather than with its evolved social functions as described in How oxytocin and vasopressin were repurposed through evolution to serve social functions.

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/10/3104.full “Oxytocin prevents ethanol actions at δ subunit-containing GABA-A receptors and attenuates ethanol-induced motor impairment in rats”

Using expectations of oxytocin to induce positive placebo effects of touching

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Amygdala, Beliefs, Brain hemispheres, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Thalamus

This 2013 Scandinavian study detailed which brain structures were involved when fooling oneself about actual sensations in favor of expected sensations.

It was hilarious how the researchers used studies of oxytocin to create expectations in the subjects:

“To induce expectation of intranasal oxytocin’s beneficial effects on painful and pleasant touch experience, participants viewed a 6-min locally developed video documentary about oxytocin’s putative prosocial effects such as involvement in bonding, love, grooming, affective touch, and healing. As all of the material was based on published research, there was no deception. The video concluded that a nasal spray of oxytocin might enhance the pleasantness of:

  • (i) stroking and
  • (ii) warm touch, and
  • (iii) reduce the unpleasantness of pain.”

Other items:

  • Only the placebo effects for the warm and pain-reducing touches were statistically significant, not the stroking touch;
  • The a priori brain areas monitored in the “sensory circuitry” included the thalamus and were all in the right brain hemisphere;
  • The a priori brain areas monitored in the “emotional appraisal circuitry” included the amygdala.

One way the researchers summarized the study was:

“Pain reduction dampened sensory processing in the brain, whereas increased touch pleasantness increased sensory processing.”

This finding demonstrated how the thalamus part of the limbic system actively controls and gates information to and from the cerebrum, similar to the Thalamus gating and control of the limbic system and cerebrum is a form of memory study.

There was a terminology problem in the study, evidenced by statements such as:

“We induced placebo improvement of both negative and positive feelings (painful and pleasant touch).”

Touch is a sensation, not a feeling or emotion. This placebo study created expectations of sensations in the subjects’ cerebrums, not expectations of emotions.

Also, including parts of the limbic system such as the amygdala in the “emotional appraisal circuitry” didn’t mean that the researchers studied feelings or emotions. We know from research summarized in the Conscious mental states should not be the first-choice explanation of behavior study that:

“Neither amygdala activity nor amygdala-controlled responses are telltale signatures of fearful feelings.“

The current study cast additional light on the dubious Problematic research on human happiness study. Those researchers were fooled by a positive placebo effect!

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17993.full “Placebo improves pleasure and pain through opposite modulation of sensory processing”

Hypothalamic oxytocin and vasopressin have sex-specific effects on pair bonding, gregariousness, and aggression

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Hypothalamus, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Stress, Vasopressin

This 2014 bird study showed the complementary effects of neurochemicals vasopressin and oxytocin in the hypothalamus.

Oxytocin neurons in the hypothalamus promote pair bonding and gregariousness in females.

Vasopressin neurons in the hypothalamus promote maternal care, social recognition, and gregariousness in both males and females, and aggression in males toward females.

Vasopressin and oxytocin released generally and in other parts of the brain have different effects. For example:

“Central administration of oxytocin also attenuates stress-induced effects on the brain and reverses stress-induced social avoidance.”

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/16/6069.full “Hypothalamic oxytocin and vasopressin neurons exert sex-specific effects on pair bonding, gregariousness, and aggression in finches”

Do researchers have to be cruel to our fellow primates to adequately research oxytocin?

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Brain development, Cortisol, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Primal Therapy , ,

This 2014 primate study found:

“Oxytocin increased infants’ affiliative communicative gestures and decreased salivary cortisol, and higher oxytocin levels were associated with greater social interest.”

One would have to take an anti-evolutionist stance and believe that primates do not feel what humans feel to consider this process to NOT be cruel:

“To test these macaques, we took advantage of ongoing experiments requiring infants to be separated from their mother on the day of birth. Infants were nursery-reared, housed individually, with a cloth surrogate mother. They could see and hear other infants, but could not touch them.”

We know that primate infants, like humans, need “nourishment, transportation, warmth, protection, and socialization” from their mothers. What level of findings about oxytocin can a research study make that would justify this deprivation?

It surely wasn’t the findings this study made. We knew without doing the study that getting oxytocin from a nebulizer would be nowhere near an acceptable substitute for a mother’s touch and care.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/19/6922.full “Inhaled oxytocin increases positive social behaviors in newborn macaques”

Problematic research on oxytocin: If the study design excludes women, its findings cannot include women

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Cerebrum, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin , ,

This 2014 study’s findings that “the hormone oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty” can’t apply generally to humans because its subjects were ALL men.

Regarding oxytocin, the researchers certainly knew or should have known previous studies’ findings about sex differences, as did Is oxytocin why more women than men like horror movies? which cited:

“Oxytocin modulates brain activity differently in male and female subjects.”

Regarding differing reciprocal behaviors, the researchers also knew or should have been better informed about associated brain areas through studies such as Reciprocity behaviors differ as to whether we seek cerebral vs. limbic system rewards and its references.

And how could the study produce reliable, replicable evidence of:

“Dishonesty to be plastic and rooted in evolved neurobiological circuitries”

when the researchers performed NO measurements of “neurobiological circuitries” that supported that finding?

What was the agenda in play here? What did the female Princeton reviewer see in this study that advanced science?

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/15/5503.full “Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty”

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Is oxytocin why more women than men like horror movies?

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Amygdala, Brain hemispheres, Limbic system, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Serotonin

This 2014 human study showed how oxytocin regulates serotonin with the involvement of the right part of the amygdala.

The following passage caught my eye as a possible explanation of why more women than men prefer horror movies: oxytocin?

“We have chosen to enroll male subjects only to avoid the confounding effects linked to sex and a possible interaction with gonadal steroids. Indeed, as shown by previous studies, oxytocin modulates brain activity differently in male and female subjects.

For instance, oxytocin suppresses amygdala response to emotionally threatening stimuli in males but enhances the same response in females.“

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8637.full “Switching brain serotonin with oxytocin”

How oxytocin and vasopressin were repurposed through evolution to serve social functions

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Neurochemicals, Oxytocin, Vasopressin

This 2013 primate summary study showed how nonsocial behaviors, neurology and neurochemicals were repurposed through evolution to serve social functions.

Oxytocin and vasopressin retained their:

  • water regulation,
  • reproduction, and
  • anxiety relief

functionalities while they also evolved to become instrumental in:

  • pair-bonding,
  • parental care,
  • selective aggression,
  • social prominence,
  • generosity, and
  • trust.

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10387.full “Neuroethology of primate social behavior”