The cuddle hormone, the love chemical.
The oxytocin-trust connection is pretty much established. At least, people sell oxytocin so you can spray it in the air and then exploit the unsuspecting.
After dopamine, oxytocin is what makes the world go round. It promotes bonding between humans — not just for a one night stand, but presumably so that a group can be together in cooperation. So the first six months are dopamine, and the next six are oxytocin-and relatives. Prairie voles are studied in this regard.
Oxytocin is for social bonding. When the oxytocin receptors don’t work, there is no social recognition.
CD 38 regulates oxytocin secretion — now, when will someone come up with this?
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Bioessays. 2007 Sep;29(9):837-41.
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CD38 regulates oxytocin secretion and complex social behavior.
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.
The peptide hormone oxytocin plays a critical role in regulating affiliative behaviors including mating, pair-bond formation, maternal/parenting behavior, social recognition, separation distress and other aspects of attachment. Jin and colleagues1 recently reported intriguing findings that CD38, a transmembrane receptor with ADP-ribosyl cyclase activity, plays a critical role in maternal nurturing behavior and social recognition by regulating oxytocin secretion. This research may have implications for understanding disorders marked by deficits in social cognition and social functioning, including autism, social anxiety disorder, borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia. BioEssays 29:837-841, 2007. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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