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- Title
Oxytocin Experiments Shed Light on Mechanisms Shaping Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors in Non-human Mammals.
- Authors
Smith, Jennifer E.; Petelle, Matthew B.; Jerome, Emily L.; Cristofari, Hélène; Blumstein, Daniel T.
- Abstract
Oxytocin has gained a reputation in popular culture as a simple "love drug" or "cuddle hormone", yet emerging biological evidence indicates that the effects of oxytocin are complex, mediating a suite of behavioral traits that range from ultrasocial to antisocial. Here we provide a comprehensive review to assess the salience of oxytocin in the lives of free-living social mammals. We reviewed the literature to understand the potential effects of oxytocin in promoting prosocial and antisocial behaviors in non-human mammals. Our review highlights a strong bias for studies of model organisms in highly-controlled settings, and emerging evidence for oxytocin's antisocial, context-specific and sex- specific effects. We discuss the results of the review in the context of insights gained from a pilot study aimed to investigate the potential for oxytocin to promote social cohesion in free-living yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventer). Our field experiment offers an example of the diverse issues that arise when conducting oxytocin manip- ulations in ecologically relevant contexts. Our synthesis highlights the challenges associated with acquiring adequate sample sizes for field-based, manipulative studies that require standardized measures of social behavior. Taken together, our findings lead us to join others in calling for revision of a simplistic view of oxytocin's role in regulating patterns of behavior. We draw from classical approaches used to study the mechanistic basis of behavior and offer a useful guide for disentangling these effects while appreciating the complex actions of oxytocin in shaping mammalian social behavior.
- Subjects
MAMMAL behavior; OXYTOCIN; DELINQUENT behavior; SOCIAL cohesion; YELLOW-bellied marmot
- Publication
Integrative & Comparative Biology, 2017, Vol 57, Issue 3, p619
- ISSN
1540-7063
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/icb/icx091