"I see you all got the sample packets in the mail! Did you send them to the rich, as you were instructed?"
Posted on 05/22/2008 2:14:28 AM PDT by Schnucki
A nasal spray which increases our trust for strangers is showing promise as a treatment for social phobia, say scientists from Zurich University.
They found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed.
Brain scans showed the hormone lowered activity in the amygdala - a region which is overactive in social phobics.
Drug trials are under way and early signs are promising say the scientists.
Nicknamed the "cuddle chemical", oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, which has been shown to play a role in social relations, maternal bonding, and also in sex.
Lead researcher Dr Thomas Baumgartner said: "We now know for the first time what exactly is going on in the brain when oxytocin increases trust.
"We found that oxytocin has a very specific effect in social situations. It seems to diminish our fears.
"Based on our results, we can now conclude that a lack of oxytocin is at least one of the causes for the fear experienced by social phobics.
"We hope and indeed we expect that we can improve their sociability by administering oxytocin."
Powerful effect
Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.
In this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar trust game.
They were asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits or betray the subjects trust by keeping the profit.
The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.
After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.
"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.
"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."
In a second game, where the human trustees were replaced by a computer which gave random returns, the hormone made no difference to the players' investment behaviour.
"It appears that oxytocin affects social responses specifically related to trust," Dr Baumgartner said.
Defence barriers
During the games, the players' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
The researchers found that oxytocin reduced activity in two regions which act as natural "defence barriers".
They are the amygdala, which processes fear and danger, and an area of the striatum, which helps to guide future behaviour, based on reward feedback.
The amygdala has been found to be extremely active in the brains of sufferers of social phobia.
Dr Baumgartner's colleague, Professor Markus Heinrichs, has begun a study where social phobia sufferers are given either oxytocin or a placebo, in combination with cognitive and behavioural therapy.
The trials are ongoing, but Dr Baumgartner said that early signs appear "promising".
The hormone could also be a candidate for treating patients with autism, he says.
"Autistic people also have a fear of social situations and have problems interacting, so it is very likely that oxytocin could help," he said.
"This hormone seems to play a very specific role in social situations so might be able to improve autism. But so far I am not aware of any studies."
Mauricio Delgado, a psychologist at Rutgers University, said: "This study has significant implications for understanding mental disorders where deficits in social behaviour are observed.
"While a degree of wariness may protect one from harm, being able to ''forgive and forget'' is an imperative step in maintaining long-term relationships.
"The reported oxytocin finding could provide a bridge for potential clinical applications."
Maybe the federal government has been using this for years, seeing how people continually trust them with their money!
” They found that people who inhaled the “love hormone” oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed “
Boy, doesn’t that give rise to a whole universe of ‘tinfoil’ speculations...
Think about what something like this might do as an air freshener in stores, or even political rallies and polling places....
Hmmmmmmmmm........
The article doesn’t seem to address the obvious: The potential for abuse. How can someone write such an article, ignoring the elephant in the room? Journalists sometimes amaze me. But it is, after all, the BBC.
Well, it seems we have found the culprit for the mortgage crisis. Trust potion was pumped into banks and law offices. hehe
A reduction in fears, or memory?
Nicknamed the "cuddle chemical", oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, which has been shown to play a role in social relations, maternal bonding, and also in sex.
Hmmm...
The amygdala regulates basic emotions such as fear, anger and craving and is affected quite early in Alzheimer's. Once Alzheimer's disrupts the brain's emotional center, a person may display surprising behaviors such as apathy, paranoia, emotional outbursts and inappropriate sexual advances. Unprovoked hostility and anxiousness might appear completely out-of-the-blue.
Once Alzheimer's er oxytocin disrupts the brain's emotional center...
... donations to politicians start pouring in!
How long before it’s sold over the internet? A boon for confidence games.
Could this explain Obamamania?
Easier to load us onto the cattle cars...
I think I know the answer to this very good question.
It's really simple. This "journalist" has been assigned by his or her boss to write a story about this drug, and about the scientists working on it at Zurich University. The story has to be interesting, and so has to contain something provocotive, ironic, counterintuitive, or disturbing; these are "journalism's" tools for creating interest on the cheap.
If the author of this story gets in to any of the downside issues of this research, obvious as they may be to anyone with an IQ above 100, negative comments, e-mails, post cards, and karma will be engendered from various infantile sectors of the BBC's audience demographic universe. This is considered "bad" by the author's boss, and by that person's boss, etc., all the way up the line.
At the end of the day, the people who write these people are mainly interested in just one thing: keeping their job at the BBC (or wherever). Not solving the problems of the world, not writing articles that are logically consistant with any sort of sensible, self-sustaining world view. In order to keep their jobs, they have to do exactly what their boss tells them to do, as quickly as possible. That means (1) covering the subject their boss has told them to write about, and (2) doing it in a way that doesn't make the reader's eyes glaze over.
Doing it on the cheap, using the above mentioned tricks of the trade (and others of similar ilk) is just self-preservation. In a way, it's the "journalism" trade's version of something called "the tragedy of the commons." It's why mass-produced food contains cheap (but unhealthy) sweetening agents, preservatives, and bulk-increasing additives.
P.S...
Sorry about my obsessive use of sneer quotes around the word "journalist." I just have a hard time taking the people who populate that line of work seriously. I think they're mostly second- and third-raters, semi-educated pseudo-intellectual phonies. I can't bring myself to call them by the term they think they deserve, while keeping a straight face.
Watch-They will have sprayers dispensing the stuff at polling places.
Drug company issuing press release to reporters: "First smell these flowers."
It does seem we’ve been *trusting* for far too long.
"I see you all got the sample packets in the mail! Did you send them to the rich, as you were instructed?"
I think Obama has been introducing this into the HVAC intakes at his rallies. It is the only explanation I can come up with!
The DUmmies and KSOsacks must addicted to the stuff..........So THAT’s what ‘s in the Koolaid!......
"Trust me".
This is the stuff that the contrail controversy is all about. The gubmint has been spraying this crap into the atmosphere for years now!!
This is the same hormone that stimulates lactation. If you notice milk letdown in the election booth, you may worry. If you are a man and notice milk letdown in the election booth, you may worry more.
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