The love potion built right in

Link
Oxytocin podcast

Transcript:

Hello everyone, thanks for tuning into 67.5 Science fm. I’m your host Calvin Li and this is 3 minute bio. Let’s get started here, today we are looking at a hormone called oxytocin. While oxytocin is often know to the science community as the “trust hormone” because it is apparently the hormone that makes humans trust others, there is actually a lot more going on with this natural magical potion. Oxytocin participates in many major events of human lives, for example, it plays a huge role in sexual reproduction, specifically during and after childbirth as it helps women get through labor by stimulating uterine contractions while increasing the trust between the mother and the child after birth, it is also able to break down social barriers as it induces feelings of optimism and of course… build trust, during sexual intercourse, oxytocin is the primary factor that gives humans the feeling of orgasms as the oxytocin levels in their brains increases tremendously. Other uses are healing, pain relief, diet aid, antidepressant, stress relief and all those good stuff. Yet most importantly, oxytocin is what makes us different. And by us I mean the human race, oxytocin makes us human, it makes us do things we called “morally or ethically correct” and care for others. Well, now let’s dive into how this amazing hormone works. As I said earlier, oxytocin plays a very important role in childbirth, in fact, both childbirth and milk ejection, which includes the stimulation of nipples and lactation, result from a positive feedback mechanism of the hormone as it enhances the original stimulus of oxytocin. As more oxytocin are released during childbirth, it intensifies and speeds up contractions thus helping the baby to go through the vagina. Oxytocin follows a simple endocrine pathway as the Stimulus binds to a sensory neuron, which causes the neuro-secretory cell in the hypothalamus to release a substance in this case the pituitary secretes oxytocin which is transferred from the blood to target effectors, the breast, which causes a response of milk release. Since oxytocin is a peptide hormone, it is water soluble because it has to go into the blood stream. Its cellular receptor is embedded inside the plasma membrane and converts an extracellular chemical signal into an intracellular response and it goes from a cytoplasmic response to a nuclear response in the nucleus. And that’s it for today’s show. Thanks for listening and have a great day.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin
http://io9.com/5925206/10-reasons-why-oxytocin-is-the-most-amazing-molecule-in-the-world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin_receptor
https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/daff0e5940a0d14285257015006e1933/aea6b52b645de868852572200079e95f?OpenDocument
The Webb schools Biology textbook