26 July 2007

Oxytocin: social viagra?

Researchers in Switzerland have found that a naturally occurring hormone could help people with social phobia (social anxiety).

The results reported in New Scientist this month suggest that a whiff of the hormone called oxytocin improves the readiness of people with generalized social phobia (having overwhelming anxiety and self-consciousness) to interact and increases their confidence in tackling social situations.

Oxytocin - variously hailed as the "trust hormone", the "love hormone" and the "mind reading hormone" - is more conventionally used to help induce labour in pregnant women and assist breastfeeding in mothers. It is a brain neurotransmitter naturally released during orgasm in both sexes.

And oxytocin also seems to inhibit the responses of the amygdala - the area of the brain associated with emotion, fear and anxiety - by dampening the amygdala's communication with sites in the upper brainstem that telegraph the fear response. This may explain why socially anxious people are more ready to engage in social situations when they have snorted a little oxytocin - they are simply less fearful.

But then there are many things you can snort to make you less fearful and more socially confident. There are tablets you could take too. And laughing gas to inhale. And they have developed this stuff you can drink called alcohol.

Unfortunately many people with social anxiety do self-medicate with alcohol and recreational drugs. But they don't like to: they would much rather be naturally confident than have to rely on alcohol or drugs. They would prefer to be themselves and have a human interaction rather than a chemical interaction. And there already exist many powerful, natural, non-chemical psychotherapeutic tools to achieve this: tools to change or eliminate social anxiety and build confidence that utilize the individual's natural resources.

Studies of the type reported from Switzerland are increasingly common: once you've found something like oxytocin that seems to inhibit fear it must be very tempting to play around and see the effects. And such research may add to the sum of neuroscience. But you don't have to be a cynic to notice the wider ethical and human (and inhuman) implications of medicalising and manipulating social bonding, fear and trust. Criminals, corporations and governments could have a field day.

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