Hug the Monkey

Oxytocin Becomes Part of Sex Ed

A pamphlet designed to give young women information about sex includes a discussion of how oxytocin's bonding effects can have unforeseen consequences, according to LifeSiteNews.

Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist at UCLA, got attention, not all of it positive, for her recent bookUnprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness Endangers Every Student. While she was criticized for being anti-sex or promoting double standards, I think it's crucial that men and women both understand the neurochemical differences between the sexes when they have sex.

The LifeSiteNews article says:

It discusses in familiar words the effects of oxytocin, a hormone released by intimate behavior, on one's ability to make clear choices and on the long term consequences of the choices one makes: "Because of it [oxytocin], you could develop feelings for a guy whose last intention is to bond with you. You might think of him all day, but he can't remember your name."

This certainly happened to me, over and over. It was intensely painful and damaging. And I don't think this pain and loss should be seen as just a natural part of growing up and dating.

Live Longer Connected

A survey of centenarians -- people who are 100 years old -- found they credited strong social connections, not genetics, with their longevity.

The survey by Evercare, which, I think, is a service that coordinates health care for the elderly, found that in addition to staying in touch with people in their communities, some of these long-living folks also use the internet to connect.

Centenarians say staying close to friends and family is most important to healthy aging (90 percent). Keeping the mind active (90 percent) and laughing and having a sense of humor (88 percent) also ranked high for living longer.

When we engage with others, even via electronic means, the oxytocin response tunes the immune system, promoting relaxation and healing while lowering blood pressure and reducing the stress response. Sociologists and healthcare providers have long known that married people -- especially married men -- live longer and healthier. But you don't need to be married, you just need to have people you can connect with regularly.

Studying the Relationship Between Pitocin, Labor and Behavior

The Joy in Birth blog posted a summary of a very interesting study of whether the administration of pitocin during labor affects a child's later behavior.

As her Ph.D. thesis, Claire Winstone devised a survey to see whether the personalities or behaviors of three-year-olds differed based on whether their moms had pitocin or not. She found two distinguishing characteristics:

The first was called "Assertiveness" , which describes a socially appropriate way that babies and children communicate their need for help and comfort when they are feeling uncomfortable or unsafe. ... babies born with Pitocin, whose mothers reported having had a more challenging time during labor and delivery, appear to have a higher need to be assertive because they seem to experience more discomfort, but are apparently less effective in asserting their needs and getting them met when they feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

The second factor was called "Need to Control Environment" and this summarizes what seems to be a higher level of discomfort or insecurity, particularly in response to "outside-in" influences (e.g., reacting to food with digestive problems or being picky eaters; problems coping with other people's timing and structure, refusing help from others) and increased or exaggerated efforts to control their environment.

Blog author FairyMom doesn't provide a link to the study or information on who Winstone is; I think she may be this prenatal psychologist. In any case, the synopsis of her study is worth reading on the blog.

How Breastfeeding Helps Mothers Bond

Scientists at Warwick University have modeled the way breastfeeding creates an oxytocin feedback loop that creates the waves of love and peace that many mothers report enjoying while they suckle their babies.

According to the the UK's Mail Online,

... the research team, led by Warwick University scientists, has shown using computer models that when a baby suckles, the mother's neurons respond by churning out the hormone from their dendrites - the part of the cell that usually receives, rather than transmits information.

This extra release of oxytocin creates much stronger links between nerve cells - creating a 'positive-feedback' loop, where the greater the concentration of the chemical, the faster it is produced.

This allows massive, intense, bursts of the love hormone to sweep through the brain at intervals of around five minutes. The findings could shed light on other chemical changes in the brain linked to mood.

Professor Jianfeng Feng, who demonstrated the effect, said: 'We knew that these pulses arise because, during suckling, oxytocin neurons fire together in dramatic synchronised bursts.

'But exactly how these bursts arise has been a major problem that has until now eluded explanation.

This must be an amazing feeling, and I can see how it would create a very deep connection to the baby. I think those of us who haven't experienced this cannot imagine the feeling. I also have to wonder -- just a little? -- about how not experiencing this affects the bonding between mother and baby.

See also, The Mother/Baby Attachment Gap.

Neglect as Damaging for Kids as Abuse

A new study shows that children who are neglected in the first two years of life are much more likely to be aggressive by the time they're four, according to this article in Science Daily.

Neglect is twice as prevalent as abuse in child maltreatment cases reported in the United States.

The lack of attention devoted to the problem of neglect -- the so-called 'neglect of neglect' -- is a long-standing concern in the child welfare field," said study co-author Jon Hussey, research assistant professor of maternal and child health in the UNC School of Public Health and a fellow at the Carolina Population Center. "Despite being more common than abuse, we know relatively little about the impact of neglect on children."

The results of the study are not surprising, but it is good ammunition for educators and people who work with new mothers and young children. As Allan Schore, the guru of attachment neuroscience, points out, a human infant left alone in the wild would quickly die. Babies that went into high alert and screamed their heads off when dropped or left alone were more likely to survive, so this recognition is part of the baby's automatic reactions at birth.

Babies who are left alone too much often get stuck in the fight-or-flight response; as they get older, and are capable of hitting or kicking to defend themselves, it's natural that they react to perceived threats with aggression.

The Vasopressin Takeover

Evan of Two Puppies Enter, One Puppy Leaves posted a link to a BBC science podcast in which scientists explain that three years after the birth of a child, oxytocin receptors in the parents' brains wane, while vasopressin becomes more prevalent.

I don't have time to listen to the podcast or follow up on the journal articles right now, but according to his blog post, Lucy Vincent (neurobiologist at the French Scientific Research Center) and Dave Perrett (Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Andrews) said that

after 12-18 months the infant becomes significantly less vulnerable (able to stand and perhaps throw off a bird or small animal attacking it), at which point only one parent would be necessary. And at that point, the oxytocin effect more or less ceases, yielding to increased vasopressin receptor activity- essentially a biochemical foundation for why people tend to “fall out of love” after a few years

I think maybe they were talking about the male brain, not the female's.

Motherhood and fatherhood both change a person's brain; changes in the mother's brain have been shown to be permanent in rats. However, oxytocin receptors, which become profuse during pregnancy, may disappear and/or become less sensitive.

Vasopressin, which is very closely related to oxytocin, may be more involved in male attachment, and lead to the expression of this attachment in protective behaviors. If you have the time, his post and the podcast are probably worth checking out.

Sexual Monogamy Probably Doesn't Exist

The prairie voles are always touted as paragons of monogamy, ever since Sue Carter at the University of Illinois made headlines by "turning off" pair bonds in females by blocking the effects of oxytocin.

The idea is that in the brains of monogamous animals, including humans, oxytocin and dopamine interact in the brain's reward centers to create what's sometimes described as an addiction to the mate.

But Carter and her early collaborator, Larry Young of Emory University, constantly reiterate that the voles are socially monogamous. In other words, they live in stable families consisting of a mating pair -- that stays mated for life -- and virgin offspring. This doesn't stop them from extra-pair copulation.

I went to a seminar last year in which Young said that a very high percentage of male prairie voles never become monogamous.

Now, new research published in Nature showed that the prairie voles cheat a lot. Lead researcher Alexander Ophir quantified these extra-pair couplings, but found that it didn't have any effect on the vole couples' ability to successfully breed and raise offspring.

The Power of Courtship

Some private comments to me from a reader prompted me to think more about how culture influences our perceptions about what's the “normal” progression of love relationships.

He's 19 and says he's never been in a relationship, and therefore doesn't understand what love is. He added that this could be because of his cultural background.

This totally makes sense to me. Love, in the sense of the oxytocin-based bond, is deeply physical as well as emotional. By that, I don't mean necessarily sex or sensuality, but rather that the oxytocin response, like other emotional responses, is a full-body feeling. I think my friend, whom I will call T., may be in a highly desirable though rare state.

I've written before about the difference between romantic love and committed, oxytocin-based love. American culture focuses on romantic love, which is based on excitement and novelty. Helen Fisher, author of Why We Love, thinks that lust, romance and love are handled by different systems in the brain, so they're not even that related. Americans strive for that early romantic stage and, when it inevitably ends, think they've fallen out of love.

So, T. seems to have managed to avoid those false expectations of romance that our culture imposes. He's an emotional virgin. That means, when he does fall in love – and I believe he will, when he's ready – he'll be able to experience it in all its depth and glory and variety, as it moves from romance to committed love.

T. also said that different groups of friends encourage him to do different things. I would guess that his westernized friends encourage him to date a lot of women, and have sex with him if he can. It's important to be experienced, they tell him. Friends from his traditional culture advise him to wait until he's found someone he wants to marry.

The more I learn about the oxytocin bond, the more respect I have for traditional behavior. Let me invoke once again the prairie voles.

These monogamous rodents provided the first clues to how oxytocin creates social bonds. Thomas Insel, Larry Young and Sue Carter all did experiments with blocking the effects of oxytocin or injecting it into the brains of voles. And they found that, especially in females, blocking oxytocin blocked the ability to bond.

But bonding doesn't happen automatically for the prairie voles. Females don't go into estrus and then seek out or accept a male. Here's how they mate: Females remain with their family groups, while newly mature males leave the nest. When a male finds a virgin female, he remains close by. After approximately three days of peaceful proximity, the female goes into estrus and they mate, then go off to establish their own nest.

The female needs time to become comfortable with the male before she's receptive. Once they've mated, they're mated for life. (Although both may engage in extra-pair copulation.)

Does that sound like traditional human courtship or what?

In fact, it's clear that human mates are able to bond deeply without going through the romantic phase at all.

My advice to T. would be: It's natural to wonder about love, to crave and desire it. Don't try to force it by doing anything that doesn't feel right or comfortable to you. Instead, wait until you meet someone who is like you. And don't worry about understanding love. When it begins for you, you'll know it.

See Also, Romance versus Love and Get Over Romance, Already.

Photo from Just Clicked.

Baby Love Training

This is one of the more unusual programs I've ever seen.  Aschool in Seattle is teaching kids empathy by bringing up baby into the classroom.  it's an anti-bullying program. The theory is even being around the baby, whether or not it's your own or you even know, it stimulates the release of oxytocin.  And oxytocin increases empathy, as many studies have now shown. So, if kids have more empathy, they'll be less likely to bully, the theory goes.

So, the idea is, these kids are exposed regularly to baby they release oxytocin feel kinder to each other and over time, this becomes a natural and automatic state of being.

Follow the links in this blog post to find out more about the program.

Maybe I'm a little over sensitive to the germ issue right now, thanks to everybody I know having been sick this winter, but I'm a little surprised they can find someone willing to bring a baby into their classroom.

Quiz: Is It True Love?

I write a lot about the difference between romantic love -- which never lasts -- and what I call "true love." To me, true love is the deep, emotional and physical bond that's based on oxytocin.

I wrote a quiz that's not super-scientific, so don't go making any important decisions based on it. But it should give you some insight into the basis of your relationship.

You can find it here: Is It True Love?