Oxytocin Essay

A critique of “Ehrlich, David E, and Donald G Rainnie. 'Prenatal Stress Alters The Development Of Socioemotional Behavior And Amygdala Neuron Excitability In Rats '.

The important attachment factor is oxytocin between mother and baby. The nipple stimulation that happens when baby causes a hormone called oxytocin to be free in the mother, which in turns trigger milk let-down. The oxytocin makes mother to become intimate with her newborn baby and makes them to attach to each other. Babies can similarly imprint on their mother, deriving feelings of peace and pain reduction along with mother.

1.) Summary: Kelly McGonigal who is a health psychologist gives a thought-provoking lecture called “How to Make Stress Your Friend” at an official TED conference in June 2013. During the first part of the presentation, Ms. McGonigal confesses to the crowd that she been teaching about stress completely wrong, “Basically, I’ve turned stress into the enemy. But I have changed my mind about stress…” Ms. McGonigal emphasizes the point that people who view stress as not harmful (not their enemy), were less likely to die to people who view stress as their enemy; therefore, when people change their mind about stress, they can change their body response to stress to make them healthier. As the presentation gets further along, Kelly McGonigal states how oxytocin plays a huge role in controlling stress. This neuro-hormone, which is released during stress, motivates you to seek support, which is the reason why stress makes you social. At the same time, oxytocin acts

The hormones released during the acute stress response is considered the “master switch” in controlling the person’s behavioral and physiological adaptation to stress. (Mannironi, et al., 2013) The targets of these hormones are the cognitive, wake sleep, and reward and fear centers of the brain. (Chrousos, 2009) The growth, gastrointestinal, cardiorespiratory, metabolic, reproductive and thyroid hormone axis, and immune systems are also effected. (Chrousos, 2009) Optimal basal

The experiments conducted used mice in two groups, an experimental group that underwent chronic early life stress and a control. Hormone production analysis for each subject occurred as the experiment proceeded. The mice underwent object recognition tasks, followed by sucrose and forced swim tests to quantify the effects of depression and anhedonia. Reduction of CRH production then occurred via short-hairpin RNA intervention in target mice. The mice were then retested, and given a social play test. The experiment then analyzed the synapse function of the control and CES mice. Cell imaging determined neuron expression, with further testing being conducted that focused on the analysis of microglial cells in a developing fetus.

showed that prenatal stress decreases cell turnover and proliferation in the hypothalamus of adult rats, which reduces structural plasticity and reduces the response to stress in adulthood. This study also showed that when prenatally stressed rats were stressed in adulthood the females showed an increase in corticotropin-releasing hormone suggesting it to be an up-regulation in the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis. Males showed no elevation of corticosterone levels. Increase in adrenocorticotropic hormone with no effect of adult stress and a decrease in the corticotropin-releasing hormone mRNA in the hypothalamus showed a down-regulation. The author concludes that this makes prenatally stressed females less reactive to later life stressors than

First, is the hormone oxytocin. Miss Munns describes oxytocin’s role as a sort of counter agent by stating “When you become stressed, your blood vessels constrict causing an increase in blood pressure which, coupled with a heightened heart rate, can damage your heart, tissues and organs. Oxytocin, however works against the constricting forces in blood flow… Oxytocin dilates your blood vessels… to mimic the blood pressure you sustain during exercise” (pg. 8). Essentially oxytocin helps reduce the negative effects of stress. Beyond this she later returns to oxytocin, this time focusing on its role in emotional

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

Now, the role of another monoaminergic pathway in DR on emotional responses will be discussed. Biagioni et al. (2013) investigated the role of DR and LC in defensive behaviors. Serotonergic modulation of hypothalamic neurons plays an important role in the control of panic disorder in humans (Erhardt et al., 2006). Electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus induces panic attacks in both human subjects and laboratory animals (Schmitt et al., 1983). Specifically, the dorsomedial hypothalamus (DMH) has been implicated in the modulation of autonomic, neuroendocrine and behavioral responses and in the modulation of pain (Biagioni et al., 2013).

Another experiment studies maternal separation in mice that showed one to three hours of separation per day throughout the postnatal period induced multiple changes with neuroendocrine and neuropeptide systems; consequently, these changes precipitated a heightened HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis response to stress due to brain region-specific epigenetic alterations that were induced through the reductions of maternal care experienced (Champagne, 2012, p43). The observation is consistent with the effect of social neglect on development in human infants. Exposure to an environment of maternal separation can produce a sensitive stress response and impairment with spatial memory. Epigenetic effects of the have also been

In the Bate, Duchainec, Burnsd, & Hodgsone (2012) article, it was hypothesized that repeated administration of oxytocin would enhance the process of recognition in memory The processes of acquisition and retrieval of memories is a critical function of the amygdala. During the process of recognizing threatening stimuli, amygdala activity is enhanced. The researchers of this study thought that oxytocin might be able to influence the process of recognition memory because oxytocin influences emotional regulation during encoding. The goal of this experiment was to examine how memory performance would be influenced by single oxytocin administration before encoding and repeated administration before encoding and retrieval.

Mitoxantrone dihydrochloride and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) were analytical grade, purchased from Sigma Aldrich and used without further purification. Experiments were performed in 0.1 M phosphate buffer pH 7.4 and 0.1 M carbonate buffer pH 10. The deionized water (18.2 MΩcm, Mili-Q water purification system) was used for the preparation of solutions.

Attachments are intrinsic to a child’s development both in the short term and for the duration of their lives. Infants have an innate need to develop an attachment with their mother to ensure their survival and are equipped with evolutionary characteristics called social releasers; physical social releasers such as large eyes and a small chin are found to be more aesthetically pleasing to the parents so they are more likely to care for them and behavioural social releasers for example, crying; very young infants typically only cry if they 're hungry, cold or in pain (Gross 2015 p535) this alerts the parents to an infants immediate need. At around 7 or 8 months of age children begin to make specific attachments for reasons other than survival, children display proximity maintaining behaviour normally with the mother,

Exposure to chronic stress acts as a risk factor as well as a precipitating agent for mood and anxiety disorders, and such stress in early life manifests itself in common mental disorders in adults [1, 2]. Majority of studies focus on the manifestation of stressful experiences in young, but there are less reports on the immediate consequences of early-life stress. Such stress activates neuroendocrine adaptive responses to cope with consequent crisis. However, due to prolonged or chronic stress, these neuroendocrine responses turn maladaptive and contribute to a phenomenon known as allostatic load [3]. These stressful events act as predisposing factors in the development of psychiatric disorders and anxiety- and depression-associated behavioural alterations in susceptible individuals [3, 4].

This can involve both chemical and organic processes that occur within the body. For example, researchers have found that the neurotransmitter serotonin drives many of the cooperative behaviors, assuming that cooperative behavior has a physiological explanation (Paula, Messias, Grutter, Bshary, & Soares, 2015). In a study on by Tomasello & Vaish (2013), researchers established that very young children were not motivated to help others around them only in the circumstances that it benefits them like would initially expected, rather they behave this manner just so that they can see that the person has been helped. This result was demonstrated through measurements of physiological arousal in the children, which provided further proof that many of the responses that occur within the body are also in control of the development of human