Pacific Standard July-August 2013 Cover

Oxytocin Levels Predict Longevity of Love Affairs

Oxytocin Levels Predict Longevity of Love Affairs

There’s nothing like the bliss of a new romance. And yet, many experiencing such rapture find it disrupted by a nagging question: How do we know our love will last? Newly published research suggests a possible answer: Get your oxytocin levels checked. A team of researchers led by Ruth Feldman of the Gonda Brain Sciences Center of Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have just published a study examining the role oxytocin, commonly called the “cuddle hormone,” plays in the early stages of romantic relationships. While differentiating cause and effect is tricky, the researchers find a ... Read More

Oxytocin Increases Trust — Under Certain Conditions

Oxytocin, the subject of this month’s Miller-McCune magazine cover story, has been called “the love hormone” or “liquid trust.” As our Michael Haederle reports, raising levels of the neuropeptide has been shown to make people more altruistic and generous. Before we start putting this stuff into the water, however, it’s worth asking the question: Does it also make us more gullible? Trust is great, but not everyone is trustworthy. A research team led by psychologist Moira Mikolajczak of the Universite catholique de Louvain in Belgium addressed that question in a study, which ... Read More

The Best Fiscal Stimulus: Trust

The neuroeconomist Paul Zak is driving west along Interstate 10 on a gorgeous Southern California morning. As we pass emerald hillsides, glowing from recent rains, and the snow-blanketed ridges of the San Gabriel Mountains, Zak talks about how standard economics neglects the biological mechanisms of trust that underlie myriad human interactions. "Why people cooperate — why people are altruistic — is a huge question," he says. "When you think about how much of the world works on a handshake or on holding a door open for somebody in an airport, all that kind of falls through the cracks in ... Read More

Whipping Up Kindness in the Lab

Scientists have known for more than 50 years that a hormone called oxytocin plays a critical role in stimulating uterine contractions during labor and delivery, and that afterward, it helps a nursing mother to release milk for her infant. Men also produce oxytocin, it turns out, although at lower levels than women. Released during sexual arousal, it appears to promote feelings of contentment and attachment in both sexes, which accounts for one of its cuter nicknames: "the cuddle hormone." But these days, scientists know oxytocin does so much more. Made in a region of the brain known ... Read More

Science, Human Rights and the Military

Neuroscience and national security go together somewhat uneasily. Stick the two in a single sentence, and University of Pennsylvania historian Jonathan Moreno starts getting e-mails from all kinds of people who are sure they've been brainwashed by the CIA. (It might not help his inbox that he wrote a book called Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense.) "It's hard to talk about these issues in part because we have kind of a paranoid popular-culture background," Moreno said. Maybe you've seen The Manchurian Candidate, or, more recently, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Neuroscience and ... Read More

Need to Heal? Make Yourself Comfy

The wounds of rats heal better when the rodents are living in a comfortable, less stressful environment, according to new research from the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Shriners Burns Hospital. Allowing rats living in isolation to build nests led to more efficient and thorough healing of their burn injuries than was seen in isolated rats without access to nest-building materials. This effect could also be observed in the brain, where stress-associated structures displayed altered gene expression. "These findings are consistent with ... Read More

Naked Pleasure

They're anything but warm and fuzzy. Wrinkled, bald with slits for eyes, naked mole rats huddle together underground for warmth. While they have no hair, poor eyesight, an unregulated body temperature and no pain sensation in their skin, these critters have something that most rats, most mammals in fact, don't — a remarkable, eusocial, home life. Like ants and some bees, naked mole rats belong to a cooperative colony with one queen, a few breeding males and many "undifferentiated" baby sitters/home keepers. New research shows that oxytocin (the "love" hormone) may contribute to their ... Read More