Brains On Purpose™

Oxytocin again: This neuropeptide may not be a "magical 'trust elixir'"

Here's another piece of research on oxytocin. (Links to past posts about oxytocin below.)

The study from Psychological Science is here: "Oxytocin Makes People Trusting, Not Gullible." Excerpt (citations removed):

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) plays such a key role in social behavior that it has been referred to as “the love hormone” and “liquid trust”. These nicknames have an element of truth: When OT levels are increased, people do in fact seem to become more altruistic, trusting, and generous.

The effect of OT on prosocial behavior—and on trust in particular—is so strong that it has been suggested that OT may make people indiscriminately prosocial (e.g., trusting to a fault). While the press and researchers alike have worried about its potential misuse by politicians, the armed forces, and marketers, OT retailers have flourished by convincing clients that they can close deals with a few whiffs of OT.

But does OT really increase people’s trust in anybody, or can contextual cues of unreliability override the effects of OT? Animal studies suggest that OT’s social effects may be context dependent. In rodents, a female’s OT release after giving birth decreases her aggressiveness toward her offspring but increases her hostility toward potentially aggressive female intruders. It is not known, however, whether OT’s effects are context dependent in humans. To examine this issue, we used a customized version of the trust game. In this

4 steps to changing your brain, your unwanted habits, your stress level

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz is one of the the pioneers in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In his book Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior, you may read about his four-step method of treatment and learn how they can change your brain.

Early next year, a new book he and Dr. Rebecca Gladding are writing will be available. For those of us who want to make positive changes in our lives—and brains, this book will be a valuable tool and guide because the the authors have broadly expanded the use of the four steps beyond the realm of OCD.

For a brief taste of the new book, I recommend that you read an interview of Jeff by Dr. Elisha Goldstein about how to use the four steps to reduce stress. An excerpt from this just-posted interview:

Elisha: In your book Brain Lock you present a four step process for working with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that has gained prominence and is being used by therapy centers around the world. Tell us a bit about this 4 step process and why it works?

Jeff: The four steps came out in brain lock published in 1996. I have a new book that’s going to be out in the beginning of 2011 and the co-author, Rebecca Gladding, is former Chief Resident in Psychiatry at UCLA and now UCLA faculty. In this new book we apply these same 4 steps in OCD to a much broader application and really use it as a means for stress management.

I’ll give you both versions.

First step is the same in both, Relabeling. There’s been great work by Matthew Lieberman OF UCLA on the tremendous power of labeling on emotional faces and other things to manage Amygdala hyper-responsiveness, in other words to manage fear and stress responsiveness. This research says if we put a label on our emotion, we can help manage our response to it. So Step 1 is Relabel.

Step 2 is called Reattribute ... .

Click to read the rest of the interview.

Law & Neuroscience Project Web site links to many resources

The Law & Neuroscience Project, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, maintains a Web site. Click to see the site, Project blog, external web resources, online video, bibliography, and list of related blogs.

New interview with Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz now up: Why recent neuroscience research is a waste of money

Click to read the new interview of Jeff now up at Mindfulness & Psychotherapy (PsychCentral):

Excerpt from Dr. Elisha Goldstein's interview of Jeff:

Today it is my pleasure to bring to you a wonderful interview with Jeff where he gives us some more insight into neuroplasticity and why the vast amount of research in neuroscience has been a “gargantuan waste of money.”

Elisha: Donald Hebb made the statement, neurons that fire together, wire together. A lot of people are now using this phrase to refer to neuroplasticity. Can you give us some more insight into this concept?

Jeff: That’s a great question Elisha! I’ve been using that principle (aka Hebb’s Law) in connection with the term “self-directed neuroplasticity” and I’ve co-authored an article in Progress in Brain Research on exactly that. This jumps right into the quantum aspect of the work that I’ve done. To give the short answer, there is a physical phenomenon in quantum mechanics, called Quantum Zeno Effect that I’ve written a great deal about.  This is work I’ve done over many years in collaboration with physicist Henry Stapp at UC Berkeley-Lawrence Berkeley labs. What the Quantum Zeno Effect does is that it allows, in a neuroscience context, for focused attention to stabilize brain circuitry.

Click to read the rest of the interview.

I see that the ABA's Section of Dispute Resolution is holding its Annual Conference in Denver next year (and will include a neuroscience track)

Darn! Darn! Darn! TypePad is really annoying me these days. I am trying to learn how to use the so-called new and improved blog posting program, and it periodically simply disappears my posts. The post I am about to write again below was recently lost in the 'net ethers. Grrrrrrrr. Here goes, one more time . . .

For links to all the info about next April's ABA ADR event and the Call for Proposals, click over to ADR Prof Blog. The Annual Conference will be held in Denver on April 13-16, and the proposals are due August 30. Conference tracks include one on "Communication, Neuroscience, and Psychology." For those of you with expertise in those arenas (or any others in the list of 14 tracks), you may want to apply to present [pdf]. (I don't know if neuroscience has been a subtrack at past conferences; I would guess that it has?)

Help me solve a mystery, please. What is that pink and tan building in the foreground of the banner above? In all my years of living in Denver, I don't think I have seen that structure.

Note: Thanks to a friend who knows Denver better than I, the mystery is solved. That building is the boathouse at City Park.

Empathy is a good thing? Oxytocin, too? Beware because each has a dark side

Currently empathy seems to be a sought-after goal. Why? I am not sure because seeking it in the name of good, peace, and collaboration is as silly as seeking focus or communication skills or charisma for the same purposes. Empathy, focus, skilled communication, and charisma are a few of many traits and states that are neutral. When they are used in the furtherance or service of helping or harming another, they assume goodness or badness.

Because empathy is a neutral skill until one uses it, I grow impatient when I hear people blithely stating that we must raise the amount of empathy in our culture or foster it in our children. As a result of my impatience, I've blogged in the past here and here about this mischaracterization of empathy.

Today I blog about it again because I wanted to share with you something psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has written on empathy. Before you join, or remain on, the empathy cheering squad, I recommend you read what he has written.

In this piece, Dr, Schwartz also turns a critical eye on oxytocin; it too has a downside, although you might not know it given how, typically, only its sunny side is written and talked about, often by conflict professionals.

Jeff writes:

Homo Empathicus: a creature with a two-edged sword

By Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D.

Empathy is an aspect of the human mind that gets really good press, but as so with many of the qualities esteemed in our celebrity culture it’s a trait that starts to send up warning signals when looked at more than superficially.

We all tend to think we know intuitively what empathy is, and in some sense we do --- empathy is that well known mental sense of “making a connection” with other people. It seems so warm and fuzzy.  But problems start when we go a little deeper and

Interviews of several psychology and neuroscience bloggers: Who are they and why do they blog?

Reading through these interviews can be time-consuming, and worth the time. For example, each of the interviewees recommends his or her favorite blogs and books; these recommendations can send you off on several exploratory link-paths. They also talk about such topics as why they got into science blogging and how blogging affects their "day jobs."

From The bloggers behind the blogs (Research Digest blog):

Blogging has emerged as a powerful medium in recent years and nowhere is this more evident than in psychology and neuroscience. But who are the people behind these increasingly influential blogs? What are their motives and what advice do they have for aspiring bloggers? The Research Digest caught up with a handful of the world's leading psych bloggers to find out:

• Jacy Young of Advances in the History of Psychology.
• Jesse Bering of Bering in Mind.
• Anthony Risser of BrainBlog.
• David DiSalvo of Brainspin & Neuronarrative.
• Petra Boynton of Dr Petra.
• Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks.
• Mo Costandi of Neurophilosphy.
• David Dobbs of Neuron Culture.
• Neuroskeptic of Neuroskeptic.
• Hesitant Iconoclast of Neurowhoa!
• Scarlett de Courcier of Ramblings of an Academic Petrolhead, Paracademia and 28 others.
• Dave Munger of Research Blogging and Cognitive Daily.
• Wray Herbert of We're Only Human & Full Frontal Psychology.

Click to the post to follow links to all the interviews. You may find a new blog or two to add to your RSS feed.