Love Drug

[andrewducker]

There's a fascinating talk here called "Love, Belief and Neurobiology of Attachment" on the role of oxytocin in trust relationships. You can skip the first 3 minutes of introduction and the final 15 minutes of questions, but the remaining half an hour is well worth watching. The most interesting bit was on the 2% of subjects who just don't react at all - and also share traits of being emotionally labile, happy to gain from the loss of others, and view the world of being made up of trusting people (i.e. mugs). But it's all worth a look - keep your finger on the pause button though - the slides don't appear for nearly long enough to take in all the detail.

What I also find fascinating is that the person is giving the talk to a Christian Bioethics Research Centre, and has clearly tailored bits of his talk to them. I had to ignore the occasional thing in the talk, but the bits of how trust links in to belief was quite interesting all by itself.

Over here is a similar piece on mother-child interactions, which picks back up one of the things mentioned in the talk - that while there are genetic predispositions for oxytocin receptiveness, it's incredibly affected by the treatment in the early weeks sof life.

(cheers to is_not_well for pointing me at the talk in the first place).

Comments

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I remember reading some of this stuff towards the end of my pregnancy and in the first month or so and feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the fear that if I couldn't give exactly what was needed I would mess up my baby's brain chemistry for life.

I've got a slightly more balanced view of it nowadays, but I do worry that this culture's ideas of how to help a new mother (take the baby away from her) go so much against the grain of how mothers and babies bond.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - while I find a lot of this stuff fascinating, I don't think it's necessarily helpful to know, in an immediate sense.

On the other hand, the fact that you worried at all is probably a sign of good motherhood :->

And yes, I totally agree with your second point.