Hug the Monkey

Oxytocin for Psychotherapy

Researchers in Australia will test whether sniffing oxytocin can make couples more open when they engage in psychotherapy, AKA couples counseling. Here's more information on the clinical trial.

According to this article from the Sydney Morning Herald,

The team leader, Adam Guastella, said research had shown the hormone could enhance trust and improve people's ability to interpret the emotions of others correctly. "These attributes are important for being open and honest with your partner during counseling."

The article goes on to quote Dr. Guastella as saying that the effectiveness of couples therapy hasn't improved in 20 years, and only about 30 percent of couples who undergo counseling report great improvement. Another third say they got some benefit.

The idea is that treating the couple with oxytocin right before a session could make them more open and able to communicate. Beate Ditzen, now in Zurich, did a study at Emory University showing that inhaling oxytocin made couples better at communicating. (See "Oxytocin Keeps the Lid on Spats.")

So, while this could work, there's an underlying assumption here that I find unhealthy: My therapy doesn't help people, so let's give them a drug.

According to my research for my book , therapy works when it creates changes in the brain by offering the client new and safe emotional experiences. The therapist must form a true relationship with the client, and then lead him -- emotionally, not intellectually -- into a healthier form for that relationship. It's emotional practice. In the case of someone who has been severely traumatized, this can actually change the structure of the brain and increase its ability to use oxytocin for bonding.

Certainly, some psychotherapists are better at this than others. In fact, it's likely that many people go into psychotherapy because they have their own relationship problems that they haven't worked out.

But therapy clearly can work; there have been a couple imaging studies that I can't locate right now that have shown differences in brain activity in schizophrenics and people with depression following psychotherapy.

So, instead of giving their clients drugs, maybe therapists should learn to do their job better.

RAD Becoming Recognized

The horrible stories about the abuse of children with reactive attachment disorder in the foster and adoption system just keep coming.

Therefore, I'm especially happy to read this story from the UK of a woman who's had success in mothering RAD kids.

Sue Clifford began adopting traumatized children in 1991. She intuitively developed parenting styles that help them, in advance of the new understanding neuroscience has provided in the last ten years.

Adopting for Love

Ralph James Savarese's op-ed in yesterday's Los Angeles Times is so inspiring for its depiction of a parent's unyielding love for a child.

Savarese is the author of "Reasonable People: A Memoir of Autism and Adoption," coming out today from Other Press. The book tells the story of their son's rebirth after eight years in their care. The six-year-old they adopted had been diagnosed as autistic, abandoned by his mother and abused in foster care.

They had bonded with him when Savarese's wife, an autism expert, had attempted to help the mother. Their love for him was already too strong to let him slip away into a life of trauma.

He writes,

"Despite the stigma attached to "special-needs children," people do adopt these kids. And yet, many more Americans spend gobs of money on fertility treatments or travel to foreign countries to find their perfect little bundles. I'm haunted by something my son wrote after we taught him how to read and type on a computer: "I want you to be proud of me. I dream of that because in foster care I had no one." How many kids lie in bed at night and think something similar?"

His editorial is full of righteous anger at the callous way society looked at his son, and it's full of steady love. This should be a terrific feel-good book for all parents and a must-read for anyone who wants to have a child, biological or adopted, disabled or not.

More Oxytocin and Open Source

Meme alert! Another person has been hitting the conference podium to talk about that ... special glow you get from cooperative coding. It's that glow of oxytocin.

Debbie Moynihan recapped a talk by Tor Norretranders at EuroOSCON last September.

Norretranders is a Danish writer and thinker. According to Moynihan, he told the conference that people participate in open-source projects to "glow, show, flow and 2.0."

Actually, it looks to me like Norretranders is the originator of this concept. It evidently resonated with Rasmus Lerdorf, the originator of the PHP programming language; he's been mentioning it in his own talks.

The Next Autism Crisis

Kids with autism spectrum disorder need an immense amount of therapy, and local and national organizations are grappling with how to provide every family with resources and support. At the same time, more families are competing for those limited resources.

The Centers for Disease Control recently upped its estimate of the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders; one in 150 American children will be diagnosed with ASD.

What happens when these kids grow up?

Cathy Pratt, chair of the Autism Society of America, warned a group of researchers, clinicians and parents that autism lasts a lifetime. Speaking at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Seattle today, she said that 65 percent of the people on the spectrum who are out of school are unemployed. The average income of this group is just $6500 a year.

"We have individuals on the spectrum who are living in poverty, who are homeless, who do not have options," she said.

Parents worry about what will happen to their children, who may survive them by 40 or 50 years. There are few transitional services and little employment opportunities even for high-functioning people.

The Combating Autism Act is good legislation, Pratt said, but it wasn't funded. "We don't have the money," she said. "Every state is asking, 'How are we going to fund the need?'"

Pratt called autism an economic and social crisis. Every year, that crisis worsens. While screening is getting better, IMFAR 2007 makes it clear that there's no cure in sight.

For more information and help with ASD, visit www.AutismSociety.org.

Open Source and Oxytocin

Rasmus Lerdorf, the originator of PHP (a coding language used to create Wordpress, among other stuff) has been giving talks in which he says the reward of oxytocin is a big reason programmers contribute to open source projects.

In the open source world, anyone can initiate a project: let's build a new programming language, a new tool, whatever. Then he or she must recruit other volunteers to help out. These are very ad hoc groups, and very egalitarian. The leaders are the ones who contribute the most.

At any rate, I've been trying to find out more about his talk. Ronald, of the blog Technical Notes and Articles of Interest, provides the best precis I've found so far, plus a link to Lerdorf's slides!

Sex on the First Date

This article not only gets the science wrong, but also illustrates the problems of applying the intellect to behavior that takes place on the hormonal level.

According to the article,

According to new book The Rough Guide to the Brain, sleeping with someone early on can INCREASE your chances of a long-term relationship.

Author and biologist Dr Barry Gibb reckons romps spark chemical changes in the brain that lead to love.

According to writer Bella Battle of the Sun Online, Gibb says that because orgasm releases oxytocin and vasopressin, which are associated with "the build-up of commitment," well, the sooner you start building that up, the better. Now, Battle may be misquoting Gibb. In any case, there's a big science mistake here.

It's true that oxytocin seems to be the hormone that, along with dopamine, causes that deep bond we know as love. But its effect on the two sexes is highly unequal. Estrogen increases oxytocin's effects, while testosterone decreases them. Therefore, after a single night of sex, it's likely that the woman will feel much more bonded than the man. Oxytocin's effects in the male bloodstream fall within minutes; it may take days for them to decrease in a female's.

Moreover, vasopressin seems to be related to bonding in men, sorta. It's likely involved more in the human versions of mate-guarding and nest-defending. That is, once the man feels bonded to his mate, vasopressin will incite him to take care of her. But this response probably happens over time.

Now to part two. Next, Battle asked two experts whether it was a good idea to have sex on the first date.
Sara Hedly, a sexpert, says it's not, because there's still a stigma for a woman to do this. Petra Boynton, a sex researcher, says you should go for it if it feels right.

The first response, based on societal norms, won't be enough of a reason to stop a lot of people. The second response assumes there's no emotional risk.

I wish people would make an informed decision based on whether or not they want to risk feeling bonded to this person.

Open Source and Oxytocin

Rasmus Lerdorf, the originator of PHP (a coding language used to create Wordpress, among other stuff) has been giving talks in which he says the reward of oxytocin is a big reason programmers contribute to open source projects.

In the open source world, anyone can initiate a project: let's build a new programming language, a new tool, whatever. Then he or she must recruit other volunteers to help out. These are very ad hoc groups, and very egalitarian. The leaders are the ones who contribute the most.

At any rate, I've been trying to find out more about his talk. Ronald, of the blog Technical Notes and Articles of Interest, provides the best precis I've found so far, plus a link to Lerdorf's slides!