The Neurochemistry of Forgetfulness and Forgiveness

Trust is the basis of healthy relationships and now researchers want to know how this feeling arises due to chemicals in the brain. A new study shows that oxytocin hormone tells us to trust in others even after they have betrayed our trust by suppressing the activity of a region of the brain that is responsible for fear.

This conclusion could help to a better understanding of social phobia and other related conditions.

Previous researches have shown that oxytocin increases confidence and plays an important role in linking relationships with other people. The brain regions that produce this effect remain a mystery. To observe how this hormone affects our social attitudes, Thomas Baumgartner, a neuroscientist at the University of Zurich – Switzerland and his team monitored the brain of 49 men who were involved in a game that requires trust and betrayal.

In the game, men were given money which they could spend with another person, who could increase the amount by investments and to share the profit or to betray them and keep all the money. When volunteers were under a dose of pxytocin via nasal spray, their trust didn’t diminish, even when the second player keep the money for him.

Men who received placebo spray reduced their confidence in other person. Functional magnetic resonance method has been used to make images of subjects’ brain activity when they received oxytocin. These researchers have observed a decrease of activity in a brain region called the nucleus of tonsillar which plays a key role in the development of sense of fear. A brain region called the dorsal stratium, the region that is activated when we learn from mistakes, it also reduced the activity of oxytocin administration.

However, oxytocin didn’t reduce the activity of these regions in the brain when men played a game with a computer, confirming that interaction with another person, not just hormone is needed to produce change, say researchers in an article in the May edition of the Neuron magazine. These observations suggest that pxytocin helps us to maintain a relationship by reducing the level of betrayal fear and other potential consequences, through interaction with others, says Muricio Delgado, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

“People are likely to avoid social risks, so a bit of oxytocin may facilitate relationships between them”.

Observations raise the possibility that social phobia could be a result of a defect in oxytocin effect on brain’s activity. Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, a researcher at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim – germany, suggests that oxytocin signal could be disrupted in disorders in which lack of trust or social attachment is a problem such as autism or schizophrenia.

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