Love 2.0 (29 page)

45   
a single act, performed by two brains:
Hasson (2010), p. 1.

45   
the insula, an area linked with conscious feeling states:
A. D. (Bud) Craig (2009). “How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness.”
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
10: 59–70.

45   
people’s brains come particularly into sync during emotional moments:
Uri Hasson, Yuval Nir, Ifat Levy, Galit Fuhrmann, and Rafael Malach (2004). “Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision.”
Science
303: 1634–40.

46   
your awareness expands from your habitual focus on “me” to a more generous focus on “we”:
This is work I described in my first book,
Positivity
(2009). See especially
chapter 4
.

47   
as if to prevent their pain from becoming your pain:
Yawei Cheng, Chenyi Chen, Ching-Po Lin, Kun-Hsien Chou, and Jean Decety (2010). “Love hurts: An fMRI study.”
Neuroimage
51: 923–29. See also work by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrea McColl, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio (2009). “Neural correlates of admiration and compassion.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)
106(19): 8021–26.

47   
stifled emotions … can also function as obstacles to positivity resonance:
For support for this idea, see work by Iris Mauss and colleagues. It suggests that stifled positivity erodes social connection and thereby limits well-being. Iris B. Mauss, Amanda J. Shallcross, Allison S. Troy, Oliver P. John, Emilio Ferrer, Frank H. Wilhelm, and James J. Gross (2011). “Don’t hide your happiness! Positive emotion dissociation, social connectedness, and psychological functioning.”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
100(4): 738–48.

48   
oxytocin sparked the formation of a powerful social bond between them:
Jessie R. Williams, Thomas R. Insel, Carroll R. Harbaugh, and C. Sue Carter (1994). “Oxytocin administered centrally facilitates formation of partner preference in female prairie voles (microtus ochrogaster).”
Journal of Neuroendocrinology
6: 247–50. See also work by Mary M. Cho, A. Courtney DeVries, Jessie R. Williams, and C. Sue Carter (1999). “The effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on partner preferences in male and female prairie voles (microtus ochrogaster).”
Behavioral Neuroscience
113(5): 1071–79.

48   
oxytocin surges during sexual intercourse:
Marie S. Carmichael, Richard Humbert, Jean Dixon, Glenn Palmisano, Walter Greenleaf, and Julian M. Davidson (1987). “Plasma oxytocin increases in the human sexual response.”
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
64(1): 27–31.

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a synthetic form of oxytocin, available as a nasal spray, for investigational purposes:
Synthetic oxytocin has now been approved for limited investigational use within the United States by the U.S. Federal Drug Administration.

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a double-blind research design:
This is the gold standard in human science: Neither the researchers nor the participants are aware of who receives which nasal spray—the spray with the drug or the chemically inert spray that serves as the placebo control.

49   
trusted their entire allotment to their trustee more than doubled:
Michael Kosfeld, Markus Heinrichs, Paul J. Zak, Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr (2005). “Oxytocin increases trust in humans.”
Nature
435(2): 673–76.

49   
the mere act of being entrusted with another person’s money raises the trustee’s naturally occurring levels of oxytocin, and that the greater the trustee’s oxytocin rise, the more of his recent windfall he sacrificed back to the investor:
Paul J. Zak, Robert Kurzban, and William T. Matzner (2005). “Oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness.”
Hormones and Behavior
48: 522–27. Interestingly, the effect of being trusted on circulating oxytocin and monetary sacrifice is far higher if trustees have just had a shoulder massage. See Vera B. Morhenn, Jang Woo Park, Elisabeth Piper, and Paul J. Zak (2008). “Monetary sacrifice among strangers is mediated by endogenous oxytocin release after physical contact.”
Evolution and Human Behavior
29: 375–83.

49   
more trusting—a whopping 44 percent more trusting—with confidential information about themselves:
Moira Mikolajczak, Nicolas Pinon, Anthony Lane, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet (2010). “Oxytocin not only increases trust when money is at stake, but also when confidential information is in the balance.”
Biological Psychology
85: 182–84.

49   
sharing an important secret from your life with someone you just met increases your naturally circulating levels of oxytocin:
Szabolcs Keri and Imre Kiss (2011). “Oxytocin response in a trust game and habituation of arousal.”
Physiology and Behavior
102: 221–24. The effect of telling secrets on oxytocin holds unless you are diagnosed with schizophrenia; see Szabolcs Keri, Imre Kiss, and Oguz Keleman (2009). “Sharing secrets: Oxytocin and trust in schizophrenia.”
Social Neuroscience
4(4): 287–93.

50   
The effects of oxytocin on trust turn out to be quite sensitive to interpersonal cues:
Moiri Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, Anthony Lane, Olivier Corneille, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet (2010). “Oxytocin makes people trusting, not gullible.”
Psychological Science
21(8): 1072–74. Likewise, oxytocin seems to especially promote trust with in-group members; see Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Lindred L. Greer, Gerben A. Van Kleef, Shaul Shalvi, and Michel J. J. Handgraaf (2010). “Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)
108(4): 1262–66.

50   
under the influence of oxytocin, you attend more to people’s eyes:
Adam J. Guastella, Philip B. Mitchell, and Mark R. Dadds (2008). “Oxytocin increases gaze to the eye region of human faces.”
Biological Psychiatry
63: 3–5.

50   
more attuned to their smiles, especially subtle ones:
Abigail A. Marsh, Henry H. Yu, Daniel S. Pine, and R. J. R. Blair (2010). “Oxytocin improves
specific recognition of positive facial expressions.”
Psychopharmacology
209: 225–32.

50   
a better judge of their feelings:
Gregor Domes, Markus Heinrichs, Andre Michel, Christoph Berger, and Sabine C. Herpertz (2007). “Oxytocin improves ‘mind-reading’ in humans.”
Biological Psychiatry
61: 731–33.

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view people on the whole as more attractive and trustworthy:
Angeliki Theodoridou, Angela C. Rowe, Ian S. Penton-Voak, and Peter J. Rogers (2009). “Oxytocin and social perception: Oxytocin increases perceived facial trustworthiness and attractiveness.”
Hormones and Behavior
56: 128–132.

50   
particularly sensitized to environmental cues linked to positive social connections—for instance, to words like
love
and
kissing
:
Christian Unkelback, Adam J. Guastella, and Joseph P. Forgas (2008). “Oxytocin selectively facilitates recognition of positive sex and relationship words.”
Psychological Science
19(11): 1092–94.

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the parts of your amygdala that tune in to threats are muted, whereas the parts that tune in to positive social opportunities are amplified:
Matthias Gamer, Bartosz Zurowski, and Christian Buchel (2010). “Different amygdala subregions mediate valence-related and attentional effects of oxytocin in humans.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)
107(20): 9400–9405. See also: Peter Kirsch, Christine Esslinger, Qiang Chen, et al. (2005). “Oxytocin modulates neural circuitry for social cognition and fear in humans.”
Journal of Neuroscience
25(49): 11489–93; and Predrag Petrovic, Raffael Kalisch, Tania Singer, and Raymond J. Dolan (2008). “Oxytocin attenuates affective evaluations of conditioned faces and amygdale activity.”
Journal of Neuroscience
28(26): 6607–15.

50   
If you were to face these difficulties under the influence of oxytocin, studies suggest:
Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, et al. (2009). “Intranasal oxytocin increases positive communication and reduces cortisol levels during couple conflict.”
Biological Psychiatry
65: 728–731. See also work by Markus Heinrichs, Thomas Baumgartner, Clemens Kirschbaum, and Ulrike Ehlert (2003). “Social support and oxytocin interact to suppress cortisol and subjective responses to psychosocial stress.”
Biological Psychiatry
54: 1389–98.

50   
behaving kindly in these ways also raises your naturally occurring levels of oxytocin, which in turn curbs stress-induced rises in heart
rate and blood pressure:
Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Wendy A. Birmingham, and Kathleen Light (2008). “Influence of a ‘warm touch’ support enhancement intervention among married couples on ambulatory blood pressure, oxytocin, alpha amylase, and cortisol.”
Psychosomatic Medicine
70: 976–85. See also forthcoming experimental work by Stephanie L. Brown, early versions of which she presented in a talk at the Society for Experimental Social Psychology meeting in October 2011 entitled “Prosocial behavior and health: Towards a biological model of a caregiving system.”

51   
reduces feelings of depression, and increases your pain thresholds:
Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, E. Bjorkstrand, Viveka Hillegaart, and S. Ahlenius (1999). “Oxytocin as a possible mediator of SSRI-induced antidepressant effects.”
Psychopharmacology
142(1): 95–101. See also work by Maria Petersson, Pawel Alster, Thomas Lundeberg, and Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg (1996). “Oxytocin increases nociceptive thresholds in a long-term perspective in female and male rats.”
Neuroscience Letters
212(2): 87–90.

51   
the mammalian
calm-and-connect
response:
Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, Ingemar Arn, and David Magnusson (2005). “The psychobiology of emotion: The role of the oxytocinergic system.”
International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
12(2): 59–65. See also Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg’s 2003 book written for a general audience,
The Oxytocin Factor: Tapping the Hormone of Calm, Love and Healing.
New York: Perseus.

51   
Human greed, after all, runs rampant and can yield all manner of exploitation:
Compelling new insights on the nature of greed can be drawn from new experimental research on social class. See work by Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stephané Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner (2012). “Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA)
109(11): 4086–91.

51   
Oxytocin appears both to calm fears that might steer you away from interacting with strangers and also to sharpen your skills for
connection
: Anne Campbell (2009). “Oxytocin and human social behavior.”
Personality and Social Psychological Review
14(3): 281–95.

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your gut instincts about whom to trust and whom not to trust become more reliable:
Niedenthal et al. (2010).

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oxytocin has been dubbed “the great facilitator of life”:
Heon-Jin Lee, Abbe H. Macbeth, Jerome H. Pagani, and W. Scott Young, III (2009). “Oxytocin: The great facilitator of life.”
Progress in Neurobiology
88(2): 127–51.

52   
Without such engagement, however, no oxytocin synchrony emerges:
Ruth Feldman, Ilanit Gordon, and Orna Zagoory-Sharon (2010). “The cross-generation transmission of oxytocin in humans.”
Hormones and Behavior
58: 669–76.

53   
When a rat mom licks and grooms her pup, it increases the pup’s sensitivity to oxytocin:
Frances A. Champagne, Ian C. G. Weaver, Josie Diorio, Sergiy Dymov, Moshe Szyf, and Michael J. Meaney (2006). “Maternal care associated with methylation of the estrogen receptor-a1b promoter and estrogen receptor-α expression in the medial preoptic area of female offspring.”
Endocrinology
147(6): 2909–15.

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your vagus nerve increases the odds that the two of you will connect:
Porges (2003).

55   
regulate their internal bodily processes more efficiently, like their glucose levels and inflammation:
Julian F. Thayer and Esther Sternberg (2006). “Beyond heart rate variability: Vagal regulation of allostatic systems.”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
1088: 361–72.

55   
better able to regulate their attention and emotions, even their behavior:
Stephen W. Porges, Jane A. Doussard-Roosevelt, and Ajit Maiti (1994), “Vagal tone and the physiological regulation of emotion.”
Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
59(2/3): 167–86.

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especially skillful in navigating interpersonal interactions and in forging positive connections with others:
Kok and Fredrickson (2010).

56   
those with higher vagal tone experience more love in their daily lives, more moments of positivity resonance:
Kok and Fredrickson (2010).

56   
A handful of scientists were invited to a private meeting to brief His Holiness on their latest discoveries about the effects of mind-training:
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, had traveled from his home in Dharamshala, India, to Madison, Wisconsin, to participate in this event held on May 16, 2010, in conjunction with the grand opening of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, run by my colleague, Professor Richard Davidson. This day’s dialogue, as have many of His Holiness’s previous dialogues with Western scientists, was sponsored by the Mind and Life Institute. The exchange included scientists Dr. Antoine Lutz and Dr. Clifford Saron, in addition to Professor Davidson and myself. Also participating were contemplative scholars Thupten Jinpa, Sharon Salzberg, Matthieu Ricard, and Professor John Dunne.