Vasopressin, oxytocin and bonding (2)
Doctor Thomas Insel continues his discussion of the two neuropeptides, vasopressin and oxytocin.
People have asked could you measure oxytocin and vasopressin, you know, if I’m engaged I’d love to know if my mate has got a particular vasopressin allele or vasopressin receptor allele. We don’t have any evidence at this point that we’re going to have much of an effect on fidelity in humans. The studies that have been done so far show a statistical difference where you give the peptide, oxytocin in this case, give it to healthy young volunteers, and you ask them to make judgments about someone’s trustworthiness. You can also show with neuroimaging that you can decrease to some extent (it’s not a huge effect) the response in the amygdala to a social threat, again in volunteers. Not so much to a non-social threat, so that’s probably the interesting part from the perspective of the animal work that these peptides seem to really be working on social stimuli, not so much other kinds of stimuli. I’ll tell you though if there is one thing I would take from having worked in this system for 15 years, it’s the recognition that every species is different. You can’t conclude what oxytocin or vasopressin does in the prairie vole and say, 'Oh let’s do it in the montane vole', because you get completely different results. So to jump from prairie vole to primates and particularly human primates is a very big jump indeed. So what you’d want to do before you get too far down this pathway is to map the receptors. What we learned from studies done in many other species was that if you really want to understand the function of these peptides, find out where the receptors are in the brain. That hasn’t been done in a very precise way yet in the human brain. It still needs to be tackled so that we’ll have some idea of whether the results in humans will be more relevant to the voles or to the rats or to the marmosets or to other species that have been studied already.
vasopressin, oxytocin, prairie vole, marmosets, social bonding, attachment, thomas, insel
- ID: 2011
- Source: DNALC.G2C
- Download: Theora Video MPEG 4 Video Windows Media Video
Related Content
2010. Vasopressin, oxytocin and bonding (1)
Doctor Thomas Insel discusses the importance of two neuropeptides - oxytocin and vasopressin - in relation to attachment and social bonding.
2378. Neuropeptides Influence Social Bonds
Doctor Larry Young explains that social personality traits are influenced by levels of oxytocin and vasopressin in the brain.
2375. Drug Addiction and Bonding
Doctor Larry Young discusses his research with prairie voles and suggests that the same neurobiological processes may underlie drug addiction and bonding.
2383. The Reward System includes Vasopressin and Oxytocin
Doctor Larry Young discusses how vasopressin and oxytocin contribute to the reward system, which can promote behavior such as bonding and drug addiction.
2379. Social Differences Wired Into DNA
Doctor Larry Young explains that the genes that encode for vasopressin receptors can predict social behaviors. This intriguing finding makes the link between genes, the brain and behavior.
2385. The Neurobiology of Love
Doctor Larry Young discusses that he believes there is a biological basis to love.
2381. Is The Prairie Vole a Good Model Species?
Doctor Larry Young describes the prairie vole as an excellent model species because it forms social bonds similar to humans.
1371. Oxytocin (OXT) Gene
Oxytocin (OXT) is a gene that plays a role in social behaviors in many species. Oxytocin dysfunction may be a cause for autism.
2376. Love, Pair-Bonding, and Prairie Voles
Doctor Larry Young explains that the experience of being in love activates pleasure centers in the brain, and comments that bonding in prairie voles may be similar to humans.
2384. Dopamine, Oxytocin, Rewards, and Bonding
Doctor Larry Young discusses how dopamine and oxytocin interact in the reward and reinforcement parts of the brain to help form social bonds.