Trust drug may cure social phobia

[Coconut]

Originally Posted by BBC

Trust drug may cure social phobia

A nasal spray which increases our trust for strangers is showing promise as a treatment for social phobia, say scientists from Zurich University.

They found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed

Brain scans showed the hormone lowered activity in the amygdala - a region which is overactive in social phobics.

Drug trials are underway and early signs are promising say the scientists.

Nicknamed the "cuddle chemical", oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, which has been shown to play a role in social relations, maternal bonding, and also in sex.
Lead researcher Dr Thomas Baumgartner said: "We now know for the first time what exactly is going on in the brain when oxytocin increases trust.

"We found that oxytocin has a very specific effect in social situations. It seems to diminish our fears.
"Based on our results, we can now conclude that a lack of oxytocin is at least one of the causes for the fear experienced by social phobics.
"We hope and indeed we expect that we can improve their sociability by administering oxytocin."

Powerful effect

Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.

In this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar trust game.

They were asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits or betray the subjects trust by keeping the profit.

The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.

After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.
"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.
"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."
In a second game, where the human trustees were replaced by a computer which gave random returns, the hormone made no difference to the players' investment behaviour.
"It appears that oxytocin affects social responses specifically related to trust," Dr Baumgartner said.

Defence barriers

During the games, the players' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The researchers found that oxytocin reduced activity in two regions which act as natural "defence barriers".

They are the amygdala, which processes fear and danger, and an area of the striatum, which helps to guide future behaviour, based on reward feedback.

The amygdala has been found to be extremely active in the brains of sufferers of social phobia.

Dr Baumgartner's colleague, Professor Markus Heinrichs, has begun a study where social phobia sufferers are given either oxytocin or a placebo, in combination with cognitive and behavioural therapy.

The trials are ongoing, but Dr Baumgartner said that early signs appear "promising".
The hormone could also be a candidate for treating patients with autism, he says.
"Autistic people also have a fear of social situations and have problems interacting, so it is very likely that oxytocin could help," he said.

"This hormone seems to play a very specific role in social situations so might be able to improve autism. But so far I am not aware of any studies."

Mauricio Delgado, a psychologist at Rutgers University, said: "This study has significant implications for understanding mental disorders where deficits in social behaviour are observed.
"While a degree of wariness may protect one from harm, being able to ''forgive and forget'' is an imperative step in maintaining long-term relationships.
"The reported oxytocin finding could provide a bridge for potential clinical applications."

Sounds interesting to me. I can see it being used to help people with paranoia have working relationships with friends and spouses, although I see a potential for abuse here. For example, using it to make people gullible, such as in a police interrogation or as another method to add to the list of "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Nice find!
	Thanks for the article

[~lostgurl~]

Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.

Increased risk of gambling addiction? Could this also mean an increased risk of other addictions?

[Heretic.Ape.]

hehe I couldn't get past the first line that people would trust people with their money even after being betrayed. Soon they will be putting this into the ventilation systems at political events

[Panthers007]

I can see the Republikans rigging TV sets to spray a mist of this out of the speakers whenever a Republikan campaign ad is aired.

[Lunar Loops]

There is already a whole thread on this here:

http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/sho...light=oxytocin

[silenius]

older article: june 2005
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2005/06/67698

Sniff This and Fork It Over

Kristen Philipkoski 06.01.05 | 11:00 AM


Sniffing a substance that occurs naturally in all our bodies makes people trust others with their money, a new study concludes.
Study volunteers were more trusting with their money after they sniffed oxytocin, a neuropeptide involved in various behaviors related to emotion. In humans, oxytocin induces childbirth and lactation, and plays a key role in maternal bonding. In animals, researchers believe it encourages mating by suspending creatures' normal wariness of other animals to allow "approach behavior."

Scientists have suspected that oxytocin plays a key role in trust. Researchers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland put the theory to the test and found that 45 percent of the oxytocin sniffers displayed what the scientists determined to be the "highest level of trust" with their money. Only 21 percent of those in the placebo group were as trusting.
"This is the first paper to provide positive evidence of the relationship of this neuropeptide to the complex social behavior we call trust," said Brooks King-Casas, a researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston who reviewed the study but did not participate in it.

In the study, which will appear in the June 2 issue of Nature, 128 men played a trust game. The oxytocin sniffers acted as investors who could either transfer money to a trustee, knowing the trustee had the option of investing the money and sharing the proceeds, or keep all the money to themselves. Previous studies have shown that humans are averse to such risks, the authors wrote. But after sniffing oxytocin, the investors' average transfer was 17 percent higher than that of a control group that received a placebo.

Scientists say the research can help them understand how humans decide to trust when faced with an acquaintance who wants to borrow money, or how we decide to cross the street when a shady character is approaching. They also believe they can gain insight into brain injuries and disorders like Williams syndrome, which causes people to approach strangers without fear or discrimination, and autism, which is associated with distrust.

But watchdog groups like Commercial Alert worry that this type of research is another step toward marketers controlling what we buy or who we vote for.

For now, the science of mapping the brain and behavior is creating more questions than answers.

"The use of drugs to manipulate human emotions is not new," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "There are spies and barflies who rely on alcohol to get people to trust them or at least let their guard down. But the emerging world of new knowledge of the chemistry of the brain as reflected in this study promises to raise some of the most difficult questions of bioethics ever encountered: When can such drugs be used to build trust? Can you use them on young children? And when would it be ethical to use them surreptitiously -- if ever?"

King-Casas and his colleagues use fMRI to study the mechanism of trust in the human brain. They published a study in the April 1 issue of Science showing where and how trust decisions develop in the brain. This week, his team is launching a new study looking at how research subjects in California and Hong Kong foster trust.

"We'll see how manipulating peoples' expectations about country of origin changes their behavior," King-Casas said. "It's a critical question in diplomacy."

Even if this line of research engenders visions of political campaigners spraying oxytocin into belligerent crowds, it's far too late to stop it, says Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa, in a Nature commentary that accompanies the research paper.

"Civic alarm at the prospect of such abuses should have started long before this study," he writes, "and the authors cannot be blamed for raising it."

[Heretic.Ape.]

hmm... if I get some of this and mix it with something euphoric and somewhat psychedelic (E maybe?), I can finally start my cult muhahaha!

[Evil GIR]

Oxytocin is released during an MDMA trip, ya know.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by The Sunday Times

June 22, 2008
Hey, bashful – hormone may treat shyness

Abul Taher



Scientists investigating oxytocin, a natural hormone that assists childbirth and helps mothers bond with newborn babies, believe it could become a wonder drug for overcoming shyness. Trials have found that oxytocin can reduce anxiety and ease phobias.
Researchers say it could provide a safe answer for millions of people who suffer from shyness without them having to resort to alcohol to overcome the problem. Sixty per cent of Britons say they have suffered from shyness and one in 10 say it impedes their daily life.
Teams of scientists in the US, Europe and Australia are racing to develop commercial forms of the hormone in the hope that it will remove the incentive to drink or take harmful drugs to relieve the problem.
Paul Zak, a professor of neuroscience at California’s Claremont Graduate University said: “Tests have shown that oxytocin reduces anxiety levels in users. It is a hormone that facilitates social contact between people. What’s more, it is a very safe product that does not have any side effects and is not addictive.”
Zak has tested the hormone on hundreds of patients. Its main effect is to curb the instincts of wariness and suspicion that cause anxiety. Produced naturally in the brain, one of oxytocin’s actions includes heightening the feelings of intimacy after sexual intercourse.
Zak said: “We’ve seen that it makes you care about the other person. It also increases your generosity towards that person. That’s why [the hormone] facilitates social interaction.”
In other recent trials, researchers at Zurich University in Switzerland have managed to ease symptoms of extreme shyness in 120 patients by giving them the hormone treatment half an hour before they encountered an awkward situation. Oxytocin spray has also been successfully trialled at the University of New South Wales while researchers in New York found it lessened symptoms of autism, which include agitation.
“Oxytocin does not cure autism, but it does reduce the symptoms,” said Zak. “So there is a reduction of anxiety in autistic patients, and the oxytocin can induce them to do things like make eye contact with other people and look at their faces — something autistic people find hard to do.”
The potential uses of oxytocin could ultimately extend well beyond individual patients and into commercial environments. Restaurants, for instance, could spray a thin mist over customers to put them at ease.
It could be used as a benign form of tear gas, quelling any violent feelings among groups of demonstrators, or even to prevent extramarital affairs.
Scientists who have tested oxytocin on rodents at Emory University in Atlanta discovered that male and female rodents injected with the hormone tended to be more faithful to each other than others.
“Our experiments showed that oxytocin had a role in the forming of bonds in partners,” said Larry Young, a neuroscientist conducting the tests.
“Rodents are not normally monogamous, but in the tests the animals with oxytocin tended to stay more monogamous.”

Consipracy theorists are going to love the idea of a medically proscribed drug for "shyness" that makes you trust eveyone. The police would certianly have a use for it.

[~lostgurl~]

There are already a few threads about this:

Oxytocin Nasal Spray!
Trust drug may cure social phobia
oxytocin agonist - recreational
Anyone tried using oxytocin?

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by ~lostgurl~

There are already a few threads about this:

Oxytocin Nasal Spray!
Trust drug may cure social phobia
oxytocin agonist - recreational
Anyone tried using oxytocin?

It's an article from today's paper and, whilst I don't know if it introduces new information that is not already posted, one would imagine it would, seeing as one of the articles you have mentioned was already covered by the Sunday Times last year.

[vinylmesh]

Oxytocin doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier.Maybe a tiny amount does when you spray it nasaly but from what i've heard the effects are almost un-noticeable, definately not loved-up euphoria.
If such nasal sprays really worked then we'd have dopamine nasal sprays ect.
They're already working on oxytocin agonists.
It's oxtocin that's responsible for the "loved up" effects of MDMA.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...e-hormone.html

I read this article about non-peptide oxytocin agonists;

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...0b2893f14dc6cb





Also there's one called Carbetocin.I'm not sure if it crosses the blood-brain barrier.

Ecstasy has loads of nasty side effects not to mention that users quickly develop a tolerance.When these drugs have been developed I suspect MDMA usage will drop considerably.

[cra$h]

oxycontin for shyness? swim thinks not. swim will find that he's better at standing up for himself while on oxycodone, but will not make him social. If anything, swim becomes antisocial, and only wanting to be around at most 5 people. and that's even pushing it. If they want to cures shyness, they should use uppers. drugs like aderall makes swim very talkitive, inquizitive, and very sociable

[Nature Boy]

Oxycodone and oxytocin are two very different drugs. Don't confuse oxytocin with oxycontin.

[ShawnD]

Restaurants, for instance, could spray a thin mist over customers to put them at ease.

What?

Rapists, for instance, could spray a thin mist over victims to put them at ease.

There we go.


This sounds like great news. This might even put a dent in illegal drug use if it works properly.

[Nature Boy]

Yes, that is a bit of a strange example about the restaurant customers. I think the restaurateurs themselves would need it more.

[Panthers007]

What next? McDonalds handing out joints in their Happy-Meals to give kids the munchies and badger their parents for a repeat visit?

Sounds a bit from the far-fetched gallery.

[ShawnD]

Originally Posted by Panthers007

What next? McDonalds handing out joints in their Happy-Meals to give kids the munchies and badger their parents for a repeat visit?

Sounds a bit from the far-fetched gallery.

Asian restaurants already do this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutami...ste_perception
"Glutamic acid stimulates specific receptors located in taste buds such as the amino acid receptor T1R1/T1R3 or other glutamate receptors like the metabotropic receptors (mGluR4 and mGluR1) which induce the taste known as umami, one of the five basic tastes (the word umami is a loanword from Japanese; it is also referred to as "savoury" or "meaty")."

Sneaky Asian bastards!

[kaczynski]

A nasal spray which increases our trust for strangers is showing promise as a treatment for social phobia, say scientists from Zurich University.

They found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed.

Brain scans showed the hormone lowered activity in the amygdala - a region which is overactive in social phobics.

Drug trials are under way and early signs are promising say the scientists.

Nicknamed the "cuddle chemical", oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, which has been shown to play a role in social relations, maternal bonding, and also in sex.

Lead researcher Dr Thomas Baumgartner said: "We now know for the first time what exactly is going on in the brain when oxytocin increases trust.

"We found that oxytocin has a very specific effect in social situations. It seems to diminish our fears.

"Based on our results, we can now conclude that a lack of oxytocin is at least one of the causes for the fear experienced by social phobics.

"We hope and indeed we expect that we can improve their sociability by administering oxytocin."

Powerful effect

Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.

In this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar game.

They were each asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits, or betray the subject's trust by keeping the profit.

The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.

After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.

"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.

"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."

In a second game, where the human trustees were replaced by a computer which gave random returns, the hormone made no difference to the players' investment behaviour.

"It appears that oxytocin affects social responses specifically related to trust," Dr Baumgartner said.

Defence barriers

During the games, the players' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The researchers found that oxytocin reduced activity in two regions which act as natural "defence barriers".

They are the amygdala, which processes fear and danger, and an area of the striatum, which helps to guide future behaviour, based on reward feedback.

The amygdala has been found to be extremely active in the brains of sufferers of social phobia.

Dr Baumgartner's colleague, Professor Markus Heinrichs, has begun a study where social phobia sufferers are given either oxytocin or a placebo, in combination with cognitive and behavioural therapy.

The trials are ongoing, but Dr Baumgartner said that early signs appear "promising".

The hormone could also be a candidate for treating patients with autism, he says.

"Autistic people also have a fear of social situations and have problems interacting, so it is very likely that oxytocin could help," he said.

"This hormone seems to play a very specific role in social situations so might be able to improve autism. But so far I am not aware of any studies."

Mauricio Delgado, a psychologist at Rutgers University, said: "This study has significant implications for understanding mental disorders where deficits in social behaviour are observed.

"While a degree of wariness may protect one from harm, being able to ''forgive and forget'' is an imperative step in maintaining long-term relationships.

"The reported oxytocin finding could provide a bridge for potential clinical applications."

http://www.informationliberation.com/index.php?id=25328

[Frond]

Nice. I predict we'll see this as an anti-depressant pretty soon, since it seems that the easiest way to spread a drug throughout the population is either as a prescription painkiller, or an anti-depressant. How much of the US population is on SSRIs of some sort?

The potential for abuse here, if this is true, is astronomical.

Oh no! Think of the children! We have kids in school that may suffer from anxiety disorder, and may not like their peers, or distrust what they hear from their teachers in Health and History class! We need Oxytocin to be administered for the sake of our future generations!

[kaczynski]

Originally Posted by Frond

Nice. I predict we'll see this as an anti-depressant pretty soon, since it seems that the easiest way to spread a drug throughout the population is either as a prescription painkiller, or an anti-depressant. How much of the US population is on SSRIs of some sort?

The potential for abuse here, if this is true, is astronomical.

Oh no! Think of the children! We have kids in school that may suffer from anxiety disorder, and may not like their peers, or distrust what they hear from their teachers in Health and History class! We need Oxytocin to be administered for the sake of our future generations!

Imagine the crippling effects on freedom if everyone with a little social anxiety gets put on this drug that has clinically been demonstrated to cloud people's judgment and make them trust someone even after being betrayed.

[Spare Chaynge]

Is this available for purchase without regulation.

[Panthers007]

Let's not go off half-cocked here. If the goons want to try using this "Love-Drug" on the people - say prior to an election - what's to prevent the people using it back? e.g:

"Now Mr. Cheney, aren't we feeling better now? Oh good. Now you trust me, don't you? Oh that's just fine. The camera and microphone are your friends. Now let's be a good Fascist-Pig and take our yummy little "vitamin!" That's fine, Dicky! Now let's talk about all those business deals you've been conducting in office, shall we...?"

[Heretic.Ape.]

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