Essay On Arginine Vasopressin

The experiment shows reductionism. The intricate idea of ‘aggression’ and ‘generosity’ are studied and a cause and effect relationship is established between them and testosterone. The amygdala and hypothalamus play an important role in emotions (aggression). However, there was no mention of their role in the body nor how it may affect the results in different ways.

The Prefrontal Cortex is involved in planning of behavior, attention and judgment and the orbitofrontal cortex plays an important role in emotions and impulse control. This is related to the article because in order for people to feel empathy, their orbitofrontal cortex has to function. To act the way people do when approached by their competitors, people need their prefrontal cortex to act how they would. The article does not necessarily contradict any of the content we learned but it gives examples of how there structures in our brain aid in our behavior and in the way we act. If these parts of our brain weren’t working, people would experience impulsiveness, antisocial behavior, experience of various emotions and deficits in the ability

To determine behavioral interoception, the experimenters used a standard heartbeat detection task. Using fMRI networks, brain connectivity was measured in interoceptive, exteroceptive and mind-wandering states. Empathic ability was also evaluated to test the association between interoception and emotional

In one experiment after participants watched an emotionally charged movie about a father and son, Zak asked study participants to donate money to a stranger. With both oxytocin and cortisol in play, those who had the higher amounts of oxytocin were much more likely to give money to someone they’d never

“AB Psychopathy is characterized by a general antisocial lifestyle with behaviors including being selfish, manipulative, impulsive, fearless, callous, possibly domineering, and particularly lacking in empathy. Contagious yawning in our species has been strongly linked to empathy. We exposed 135 students, male and female, who completed the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R), to a yawning paradigm intended to induce a reactionary yawn. Further, we exposed males to an emotion-related startle paradigm meant to assess peripheral amygdalar reactivity. We found that scores on the PPI-R subscale Coldheartedness significantly predicted a reduced chance of yawning. Further, we found that emotion-related startle amplitudes were predictive

Oxytocin (OT) is a neuropeptide that consists of 9 amino acids. Oxytocin is synthesized in the hypothalamus, and stored in the posterior pituitary where, under specific circumstances it is delivered to various regions of the brain including the hypothalamus, hippocampus amygdala, and nucleus accombens. Functions of oxytocin vary depending upon the location of delivery within the brain, as well as quantity and circumstance (Ishak, Kahloon, & Fakhry, 2011). Oxytocin has been gaining the attention of many researchers over the past 60 years due to its behavioral implications. The body of previous research establishes that the peptide is vital to many aspects of social behavior from maternal care to social behavior.

They then had the students sit in a room, wearing headphones, with sensors on their face to record their expressions and were shown videos of people who were yawning, laughing, or had a neutral expression. The results of this experiment showed based on the students’ psych evaluation, the less empathy a person had then the likely they were to yawn. Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean if a person doesn’t yawn they are a psychopath (Preidt, 2015). Though none of the students were probably considered a psychopath, there was definitely a correlation between those with less empathy towards others and those who didn’t

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is a neurotransmitter in the brain that has an enormous influence over many brain functions. It is synthesized, from the amino acid L-tryptophan, in brain neurons and stored in vesicles. Serotonin is found in three main areas of the body: the intestinal wall; large constricted blood vessels; and the central nervous system. The most widely studied effects have been those on the central nervous system. The functions of serotonin are numerous and appear to involve control of appetite, sleep, memory and learning, temperature regulation, mood, behavior (including sexual and hallucinogenic behavior), cardiovascular function, muscle contraction, endocrine regulation, and

As reported by Harma Mefferet, Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola, researchers and authors of Brain Research Shows Psychopathic Criminals Do Not Lack Empathy, But Fail To Use It Automatically, published in Science Daily, psychopaths’ brains fail to use empathy as a default, but can switch to “empathy mode” when asked to. Researchers from the Social Brain Lab of the University Medical Center in Groningen (The Netherlands), recruited psychopathic criminals to better understand how they do not feel guilt or empathy when attacking their victims. Regular, non-psychopathic humans’ brains have a “mirror system.” When the somatosensory cortex is activated, it allows us to feel touch. In contrast, the insula allows us to feel pain and disgust when

The importance of the amygdala in social cognitions has been examined in both primate and human studies. Use of primates to study the social brain suggests that the amygdala contributes to social cognition. Kluver and Bucy made large bilateral lesions in monkey brains made across the amygdala, temporal neocortex, and surrounding structure. After the lesion, the animals engaged in hypersexual behaviors, unusual tameness, and a lack of knowledge about emotional stimuli. Lesions exclusively targeting the monkey’s amygdala resulted in similar, but more subtle impairments. This suggest that the amygdala may play a role in emotions elicited by social cues. Studies of the amygdala’s role in human social cognition suggest that the temporal lobes process socially relevant facial information from humans. Emotions from facial expressions, in particular fear are projected to the amygdala. Studies using FMRI to examine typical subjects and subjects with amygdala damage support this theory. Individuals with amygdala damage have difficulty recognizing facial expressions, specifically negative emotions such as fear.

Recent research published on March 2nd in PNAS has found that oxytocin may play a key role in promoting neurotypical social behaviors.

R., Redmond Roche, M. L., & Nettle, D. 2013) Authors of "Do Images of ‘Watching Eyes’ Induce Behavior That Is More Pro-Social or More Normative? A Field Experiment on Littering" went to a university to conduct a social experiment where they displayed large watching eyes in places where the most littering takes place to see if the eyes in fact created a difference in the amount of people who littered. Displaying images of eyes indeed reduce the number of people who littered substantially. People that came into contact with the zone with eyes displayed showed a significant amount of less litter than the same zone without the eyes

The recent discovery of mirror neurons was accidently noticed by Italian neuroscientists who were working with monkeys to study certain areas of the brain that operated cognitive movements. Upon this discovery, it was determined that there is an abundance of previously unknown cells within the brain that work to consciously or unconsciously detect emotions of others through their actions and behaviours, which we in turn mirror by mimicking those exact emotions. It is believed that this

This can involve both the chemical or organic processes that occur in the body. For example, researchers have found that the neurotransmitter serotonin drives cooperative behavioral activities, which infers that cooperative behavior has a physiological explanation (Paula, Messias, Grutter, Bshary, & Soares, 2015). In a study on by Tomasello & Vaish (2013), researchers found that young children were not motivated to help others only if it benefits themselves, like one would imagine, but “by a need just to see the person helped” (p. 242). This result was demonstrated through the measurement of physiological arousal, providing further proof that responses in the body are responsible for many human

However, there is a certain hormone that is an important part of having confidence in other people. It is called oxytocin. Oxytocin muffles the region in the brain that provides fear responses, and keeps the stress hormone from releasing. It causes people to “feel” connections with others. These connections, are usually unfounded, and superficial. In a study by René Hurlemann of the University of Bonn, it was found that when given an extra dosage of oxytocin, men in serious relationships noticeably kept their distance from other women. Single men however, had no reaction. This study is an example of how Oxytocin influences people to be more trustworthy and honest in their