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healthzone.ca, Canada


‘Cuddle hormone’ makes men more sensitive: Study

April 30, 2010

Lesley Ciarula Taylor
STAFF REPORTER


A squirt of the “cuddle hormone” up a man’s nose turns him empathetic and sensitive, new research has found.

Scientists sprayed the hormone oxytocin in the noses of half of 48 healthy male volunteers, then asked their reaction to pictures of a crying girl, a child with a kitten, a grieving soldier and an old man’s kiss.

The men dosed with the oxytocin described “significantly higher emotional empathy intensity ratings” up to the levels of women in the experiment. But no oxytocin, no empathy for the other males.

Oxytocin has been called the “cuddle hormone” thanks to previous studies that have found it enhances trust, monogamy and the emotional bonding after sexual intercourse, because sex releases it in male and female brains.

The experiment by Dr. Rene Hurlemann of the department of psychiatry at the University of Bonn is the first to measure oxytocin’s impact on emotional empathy.

Hurlemann’s work was one of three experiments as part of the study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience this month http://bit.ly/clBnDm . A separate experiment revealed that oxytocin enhanced the good effects of positive feedback in helping test subjects recognize and remember faces, something called “socially motivated learning.”

“Augmenting the effectiveness of socially reinforced learning and levels of emotional empathy could benefit the treatment of a number of disorders such as schizophrenia or psychopathy,” Hurlemann said in the study.

Scientists have shown “unprecedented interest” in how oxytocin affects human behaviour, Hurlemann said. This test was the first to track its effects “as a general facilitator of human learning and empathy.”


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