Oxytocin is one workhorse of a chemical
As you may know by now, if you've been keeping up with the other Mystifact Challenge entries, Oxytocin ("oxt") is naturally produced in your hypothalamus, roughly where the arrow in the photo to the right is pointing.
The oxt is then released into your blood stream, as deemed "necessary" by the vagueries of the things that happen to you and the commands of your brain. Oxt is released from your pituitary gland, which is roughly where the arrow in the much more disconcerting picture to the left is pointing.
Once it's in your bloodstream, oxt does a whole bunch of stuff . This includes physical effects - like causing the ejection of milk from the mammary glands - as well as many psychological effects - like facilitating the bonding between mother and child.
There is a laundry list of effects oxt has inside the human brain and body. But a lot of this has already been discussed. Lets talk about some, uh, stranger applications.
1. Using oxt to force cows to lactate on command.
Anyone here work with milk cows? Do your cows ever hesitate to produce, or produce too little for your liking?
Well, remember how oxt can have the physiological effect of causing milk to be excreted from human mammary glands? It works on cows too. In fact, in India, milk farmers use oxt all the time to get cows to produce milk whenever a farmer feels like it. The Indian government is not happy about it, because all that oxt gets into the milk, and then into us. The drug is banned in India, but it hasn't stopped farmers from buying oxt illegally and using to collect milk on command.
2. Using oxt to help gray seals make friends
Oxt has a popular reputation as a "love" chemical, one which is partially earned and partially a simplification of how oxt actually works. However, there's no doubt that one of oxt's many effects is an increased capacity for relationship building, whether between a mother and a child or between two people in a romantic relationship.
Here's a ridiculous question you definitely haven't considered at all: "DBER, what happens when you give oxt to gray seals?"
Well, you may have already guessed it, but when you give oxt to gray seals, they tend to make friends with each other. Or at least they spend "significantly more time in close proximity to each other. . . ," as observed by researchers in an apparently frivolous study earlier this year.
Of course, the point of the study wasn't to help seals make friends, but to try and prove that oxt is causally related to increased socializing behaviors. For the lucky grey seals in this experiment, that seems to be the case.
3. Oxt can help Meth addicted rats get sober!
Almost everyone nowadays knows somebody dealing with some form of substance abuse - whether it's alcohol or something more intense. Researchers are constantly on the look out for possible chemical treatments for the intractable problem of drug addiction, and oxt is no exception.
Researchers decided to get a bunch of rats addicted to Methamphetamine and then see if oxt could help them kick the habit. In the process, they found out a lot about rats and their relationship to meth, including:
- Female rats craved meth more than male rats.
- Oxt reduced the demand for meth from all rats, and therefore reduced the rate at which rats used meth again after a period of abstinence.
- Oxt worked best on the rats that most desperately craved the meth.
Now, does this have any direct bearing on treating humans with meth addiction? Well, no - not directly. But now we know how to treat rats addicted to meth, and its possible oxt could end up having a similar effect on humans, should there ever be clinical trials. At a minimum, should your pet rat ever get into your meth stash and develop a crippling chemical addiction, you'll know how to save it.
4. Treating childhood autism with an oxt nasal spray.
Autism is a hot button topic at the moment, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Whether by increased occurrence of the disorder, or broader diagnosis of the disorder along the entire spectrum of autistic behavior, incidence of autism has skyrocketed in the last few decades.
As a result, there is a ton of research being done on ways to ameliorate the various negative symptoms of autism, and oxt may have potential to be part of future treatment plans.
Just recently, researchers attempted to test whether oxt , administered to autistic children as a nasal spray, resulted in an increase in "social abilities" among some of the children in the study. The results were not overwhelmingly positive, but there was some indication that oxt may help some autistic children socialize.
The study is a precursor to a more complete clinical study, but at least supports the idea that there could be a future treatment for some of the social symptoms of autism, specifically for kids whose medical tests/social behaviors indicate a lack of oxt in the first place.
So, one day, when you're in desperate need of milk from a reticent cow; or eager to help your friend, Jimmy, the lonely gray seal, to make a new friend; or trying to drag your pet rat out of the hole of meth addiction; or, in the distant future, after clinical trials have been done, wanting to treat a socially uncomfortable autistic child; you may find yourself reaching for the oxt . Until then, you'll have to make due with the stuff nature already put in your brain.
DBER
Info Sources:
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin#Psychological]
[2]Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 31 May 2017
Volume 284, issue 1855
[3]http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/oxytocin-hormonal-injection-banned-drug-diary-owners/1/694862.html
[4]http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/8119
[5]http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/could-the-love-hormone-help-with-ptsd-she-wants-to-find-out/79839
[6]http://www.hindustantimes.com/health/india-cracks-down-on-wide-misuse-of-oxytocin-hormone-in-dairy-and-farming/story-2SHNG6r5LMSIzucq8e5mlL.html
[7]http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/oxytocin-hormonal-injection-banned-drug-diary-owners/1/694862.html
[8]Biological Sciences - Psychological and Cognitive Sciences:
Karen J. Parker, Ozge Oztan, Robin A. Libove, Raena D. Sumiyoshi, Lisa P. Jackson, Debra S. Karhson, Jacqueline E. Summers, Kyle E. Hinman, Kara S. Motonaga, Jennifer M. Phillips, Dean S. Carson, Joseph P. Garner, and Antonio Y. Hardan
[9]Oxytocin Acts in Nucleus Accumbens to Attenuate Methamphetamine Seeking and Demand
Cox, Brittney M. et al.
Biological Psychiatry , Volume 81 , Issue 11 , 949 - 958
Photo Sources:
[1][Mishmash of wikicommons photos licensed under CC-BY-SA - Edited Into New Collage]
[2]Methoxyroxy~commonswiki, own work, via wikimedia commons
[3]By No machine-readable author provided. Jomegat assumed based on copyright claims CC-BY-SA-3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
[4]By Keith Weller/USDA www.ars.usda.gov: Image Number K5176-3 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
[5]By Mateusz Włodarczyk Own work CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0, via Wikimedia Commons
[6]By Oskila Own work CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
[7]By National Institutes of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons