Oxytocin - Is It Truly The Love Hormone?

Wilson Tran, Oslín Licea Chávez, Jose Sandoval, Jon Zhang, Nari Kim, Denise Barroga, Chau Dang

What is Love?

Love

Love is an emotion that involves many “feel-good” hormones● Dopamine

● Oxytocin

● Vasopressin

The Chemistry of Love

Dopamine Vasopressin

● Neuropeptide hormone releasedby the pituitary gland but made inthe Hypothalamus

● Right inferior frontal gyrus○ Generally associated with

social communication and empathy

● Other important roles○ Social bonding○ Sex

Neuroanatomy and Physiology

Article #1Puppy Love

Puppy Love➢ A pet dog looks into its owner’s eyes, the same

hormonal response that bonds mothers to their infants is ignited.

➢ Those dog-owner pairs that spent the most time looking into each other’s eyes experienced a spike in oxytocin.

Rise in Oxytocin Levels

Dogs: 130%

Owners: 300%

Article #2That Missing Feeling

Common Characteristics

➢ A difficulty identifying one’s own feelings, and describing them

➢ A difficulty distinguishing between their own emotions and bodily sensations

➢ It is a personality trait, not a diagnosis➢ About 10% have the personality trait, the rest

of the population lies on a continuum ➢ Makes it harder to create and expand

supportive social groups

Quick Facts: ➢ Alexithymia can result in limited thinking ➢ People with Alexithymia have a higher risk for mood

disorders, interpersonal problems and and health problems

➢ Brain research is revealing that the neural processes supporting emotional awareness overlap with pathways that create awareness of inner states more broadly, such as stress and fatigue

Environmental Factors ➢ Emotional abuse and neglect can predict the emergence ➢ Culture plays a role as well by de-emphasizing

emotional experience○ Mexican-American men exhibiting ‘machismo’

had a higher alexithymia score➢ Gender and societal norms can influence the expression

of emotion, leading men to score higher on alexithymia ➢ Trauma and depressive incidents can also produce a

temporary state of alexithymia (“state alexithymia”)

Alexithymia and Interoception

● Studies show that individuals with alexithymia have less gray matter in the anterior insula

○ Anterior insula helps govern emotions as well as interoception

● Alexithymia and interoception are inversely related○ Awareness of emotions requires interoception

● Emotional Education○ Promising treatment○ Linking physiological sensations to emotions○ Development of inward-thinking skills through

therapy

“Alexythymics have emotions like everyone else, but they appraise them differently.” – Tom Hollestein

Article #3The Hormones Behind Eye Contact

The Hormones Behind Eye Contact➢ Briefest eye contact heightens empathetic feelings

○ Gives a sense of being drawn together

➢ University of Cambridge neuroscientist Bonnie Auyeung ○ Oxytocin given to normal men and those with Asperger’s syndrome○ Increased number of fixations, 300ms pauses, on the eye region of interviewer’s face during

interview

➢ Studies have shown oxytocin increases looking at the eye➢ Live interaction

Eye Contact and Behavior of Animals➢ Difference in gaze depending on reward or punishment➢ Provide a juice treat to its partner

○ Engage in more eye contact

➢ Deliver an unpleasant puff of air○ Turned away or blink

➢ Neurological and behavioral symptoms of autism may be alleviated

Social Implications of Oxytocin

Oxytocin and Autism➢ Ability of oxytocin to get those with autism

to look at others in the eye○ Receive many social cues from the eye region○ Allow those with autism more opportunities to

work on social skill building

➢ Showed pictures with either averted or direct gaze

○ Responded to direct gaze, reduced activity in■ Medial frontal cortex■ Temporoparietal junction■ Posterior superior temporal sulcus region■ Amygdala

Article #4Oxytocin and Mouse Hearing

Mommy Mice and OxytocinMouse mothers often move from nest to nest to avoid predators, carrying their

offspring with them.

The babies that fall off during the move cry out, prompting the mothers to backtrack and retrieve their lost pups.

So what’s going on? A study found the hormone

oxytocin alters the activity of neurons in the left auditory cortex of a mouse mother’s brain, making her more in tune with the distress

cries of lost pups

While mother mice respond to the cries by picking up the pups, even those that are not their own, virgin females generally ignore the ultrasonic

distress calls.

Oxytocin in the virgin brainTo understand the brain change that makes

mothers more responsive to pups’ cries, researchers from New York University (NYU)

injected oxytocin into the sound-processing auditory cortex of virgin

females. The presence of the hormone caused the virgin females to retrieve the

pups.

Oxytocin…

● coordinates the neuronal response● may be involved in learning and memory formation related to the sound of the distress

calls.

left auditory cortex contains neurons that are rich in receptors for oxytocin

the hormone both enhances excitatory signals and reduces inhibitory signals in LAC

Blocking the activity of the left auditory cortex with a drug caused the mothers to ignore the calls of their offspring.

From the experiment, researchers found that oxytocin ultimately enables maternal behavior by enhancing auditory cortical pup call responses.

It fine-tunes the way that pup calls activate neurons in the left auditory cortex. This enables females to clearly hear their pups’ calls within the din of normal life, thus making it possible for them to locate and retrieve their kids.

Turning mice mothers into moms

Oxytocin - Unlikely(but interesting) EffectsTesting to see how oxytocin could affect ethical decision making.

- 60 males receiving dosage of oxytocin or placebo

- 3 teams of 20 males- Every member in team asked

to predict the results of 10 coin tosses, if guessed correctly, earns money for team

- Self-tossed, self-reported

Results

- Among the placebo’d men, 23% claimed they guessed 9/10 of the coin tosses correctly.

- For the oxytocin group of people, 53% claimed to have guessed 9/10 coin tosses correctly.

- To guess 9/10 coin tosses correctly, the probability of that actually happening is around 1% success.

Main idea: So were the subjects who received oxytocin lying in order to benefit the group?

My idea: Results suggest that oxytocin may have influenced people to potentially lie to help others out.

Summary

Alexithymia

α - “no”Λέξις (léxis) -

“word”

θυμός (thymos) - “emotions/mood”

“No words for mood”

➢ Lack of intrapersonal skills○ Emotional dysfunction/

emotional blindness

➢ Socially withdrawn ○ “Unempathetic”

➢ Influence of environmental factors

➢ Inverse relationship with interoception