Hormone and gene therapies for anxiety and PTSD could be on the way...
When University of Bonn psychologist Monika Eckstein designed her latest published study, the goal was simple: administer a hormone into the noses of 62 men in hopes that their fear would go away. And for the most part, it did.
The hormone was oxytocin, often called our “love hormone” due to its crucial role in mother-child relationships, social bonding, and intimacy (levels soar during sex). But it also seems to have a significant antianxiety effect. Give oxytocin to people with certain anxiety disorders, and activity in the amygdala—the primary fear center in human and other mammalian brains, two almond-shaped bits of brain tissue sitting deep beneath our temples—falls.
