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Tag: oxytocin
The Formula for Love, Plus the Best of V-Day Science
Hey, Internet. It’s science here wishing you a happy Valentine’s Day. And we do mean happy—we wouldn’t be here if there weren’t any oxygen in the air right?
Let’s start with a pretty picture. Copy all of the below mathematical function and enter it into Google. Just do it.
sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01,
sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5
…and links to the best V-Day science out there:
You Can Die of “Broken Heart Syndrome”
That soap opera cliche of someone clutching their chest and kneeling over dead after finding out a dead lover has some science behind it. Sudden shocks—even positive ones like winning the lottery—can cause a massive release of adrenaline, causing the heart to freeze up. The hearts of patients who die from this take on a distinctive shape resembling a Japanese octopus trap, which is where the name takotsubo cardiomyopathy comes from.
Why We Celebrate Valentine’s Day: Naked Romans
Every year on Valentine’s Day, writers dig up the origin of the holiday to talk about naked Romans. Sorry, we’re not immune to it either. Those pagan Romans used to run around naked with whips, hitting young women to increase their fertility. (Seriously? Dinner plans are looking so much better now.) Then, the Church pegged that pagan celebration to the story of St. Valentine, so today we have chocolate and roses and singing valentines. We’re not really sure what those have to do with St. Valentine either.
The Dark Side of the Love Hormone
The “love hormone” oxytocin makes you more empathetic and generous and, as it turns out, also more racist and less trustful. Huh? Ed Yong, who’s covered this before on his blog, writes on the latest hypothesis about oxytocin at New Scientist. Instead of just making us feel cuddly, it helps direct our attention to salient social cues in the environment. And what’s salient, of course, depends on the environment.
Most Popular Breakup Songs According to Facebook
Since Facebook tracks both your relationship status to and what songs you listen to when (among other things), they put it together and released a list of most popular songs when starting new relationships and breaking up. We’re only surprised that Adele doesn’t have a monopoly on the breakup list.
Physical Theories as Women (and Men!)
Oldies but goodies. Two pieces comparing the types of men and women you date with the types of physics you might encounter. Did you know that the derivative of acceleration is called jerk? Just saying some of these remind us of that.
Elsewhere on DISCOVER, you’ve got the hearts of space (love really is universal), animals that don’t have sex (sex is not so universal), and right here on Discoblog’s NCBI ROFL is the Valentine’s week archive. Get lovin’.
Science Takes on an Important Question: Is the Mommy Cat *Really* Hugging the Kitten?
First, before you do anything else, watch the above video. Awwww! The twitching wee feetsies! The mommy cat drawing her baby closer!
When that little number when viral this week, the folks at National Geographic wondered, once the initial cuteness wore off, how much of this “hugging” business was just us anthropomorphizing? How are we to know that mother cats don’t embrace their kittens before, I don’t know, eating them alive or something? And what about repostings claiming that the twitching kitten is having “nightmares”? What’s the deal here?
So they asked a scientist.
Turn a Man Into Mush With a Nasal Spray of Pure Oxytocin
Who ever thought that couples could bond over nasal spray? But new research shows that a nasal spray containing the “love hormone” oxytocin helped make regular guys more empathetic and less gruff. Oxytocin is the hormone that strengthens the bond between nursing moms and their babies, and it’s also involved in pair bonding, love, and sex.
The spray was tested on a group of 48 healthy males–half received a spritz of the nose spray at the start of the experiment and the other half received a placebo. The researchers then showed their test subjects emotion-inducing photos like a bawling child, a girl hugging her cat, and a grieving man. Finally, they asked the guys to express how they felt.
The placebo group men reacted normally to the soppy pictures; which is to say they were either mildly uncomfortable or stoic. Whereas the group that had used the nasal spray were markedly more empathetic. The Register reports:
“The males under test achieved levels [of emotion] which would normally only be expected in women,” says a statement from Bonn University, indicating that they had cooed or even blubbed at the sight of the affecting images.
The study’s findings, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, suggest one trite application of the hormonal spray: Maybe a woman could give her undemonstrative husband a quick spritz to get him to really feel her pain, or to get him to coo over a kitten properly. But there might be a larger medical purpose too.
Researchers recently found that a dose of oxytocin can help autistic people become less awkward and more social. Now, they’re hoping that medication can also be developed to help socially withdrawn schizophrenics.
Related Content:
80beats: Study: The “Love Hormone” Oxytocin Can Improve Autistic People’s Social Skills
80beats: The “Love Hormone” Oxytocin Helps People Recognize Faces They’ve Seen Before
DISCOVER: A Dose of Human Kindness, Now in Chemical Form
Image: iStockphoto
Love Potion Number 10: Oxytocin Spray Said to Increase Attraction
Oxytocin is the brain’s love hormone—without it, we might not ever fall in love or attempt monogamy. We know that the hormone releases “happy” feelings during events from nursing to orgasm, and is the reason why people feel a chemical “bond” with a partner. And now, scientists have found that the hormone can also boost the sex appeal of complete strangers.
A University of Bristol study tested 96 men and women in a double-blind test by spraying them with either oxytocin or a plecebo. The subjects were then asked to rate pictures of 48 men and women for attractiveness, and 30 for trustworthiness. Sure enough, the participants that had sniffed the love hormone tended to rate the random people in the pictures as better looking or more trustworthy.
Psychologist Angeliki Theodoriduou, who led the study, found that regardless of their gender or mood, the people under the influence of oxytocin were more likely to like the strangers in the pictures.
While the researchers didn’t look at why oxytocin has such pull, they reckon the hormone’s effect on the brain is so strong that it suppresses any fearful emotions people would normally feel.
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