Oxytocin is a hormone…[that]ย has earned the nickname “the love hormone” because we secrete it when we form bonds with our romantic partner, our children, and even our pets.
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New research strengthens the link between empathy and oxytocin, by examining how patients with low oxytocin levels respond to empathy tasks.
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Researchers from the University of Cardiff in the United Kingdom looked at patients with medical conditions that might have impaired their oxytocin production.
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The conditions researched were cranial diabetes insipidus (CDI) and hypopituitarism (HP). In CDI, the body produces reduced levels of arginine vasopressin, which is a hormone similar to oxytocin and also produced in the hypothalamus. In HP, the pituitary gland does not produce enough hormones.
CDI and HP patients performed much worse in both identifying high-intensity facial expressions and “reading someone’s mind” in their gaze. The participants’ ability to recognize facial expressions was accurately predicted by their oxytocin levels.
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“Patients who have undergone pituitary surgery…may present with lower oxytocin levels. This could impact on their emotional behavior, and in turn, affect their psychological well-being. Perhaps we should be considering the introduction of oxytocin level checks in these cases,” [saidย Katie Daughters, from the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Cardiff.]
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:ย Low oxytocin may lead to low empathy, study finds
