Social enrichment boosts levels of oxytocin, new U of L research shows

caroline.zentner — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 17:06:36 +0000

Holiday get-togethers give people the chance to relax and enjoy themselves with friends and family. Such social encounters can be an antidote to stress and, on a biological level, boost levels of the bonding hormone oxytocin and even contribute to longevity.

A new study by Dr. Jamshid Faraji, a research associate in Dr. Gerlinde Metz’s lab at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge, has shown that rats raised in socially enriched community settings had higher oxytocin levels and a biological age that was younger than their chronological age.

Dr. Jamshid Faraji

While both males and females benefited, the effects were more pronounced in females. The study, which was conducted in collaboration with researchers from Golestan ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Medical Sciences and Avicenna Institute of Neuroscience in Iran, was recently published in the journal eLife.

“Rats are social animals and, instead of impoverishing them by housing them individually, we used standard housing and socially enriched the animals,” says Faraji. “In our study, we housed some rats with two or three companions and others with 10 or 11 companions.”

“We found that the large community setting produced higher oxytocin levels, especially in females,” says Metz. “Social enrichment led to higher novelty seeking in a corridor task, a behavioural test for rats. It turned out that females explored this task very differently than males when they were housed socially.”

The researchers also wanted to prove that oxytocin is causally involved in mediating the effects of social enrichment so some rats received an oxytocin antagonist which inhibited oxytocin secretion.

“Rats who had received the oxytocin antagonist did not show the same exploratory behaviour,” says Faraji.

To prove a biological correlation between oxytocin and longer lifespans, the researchers looked at telomeres, which are nucleotide sequences at the end of each chromosome. Whenever a cell goes into division, the telomere shortens. So, the older a person is the shorter their telomeres.

“We thought maybe there’s a way that social support could be protective for the telomere length, because this is a marker for biological age,” says Metz. “It turns out, for females especially, that those who benefited from the socially supportive environment also had longer telomeres. They had a lower biological age index and this could indicate, indirectly, that they might have a longer lifespan ahead of them.

“In a nutshell, it’s a very straightforward study but it has a lot of implications and definitely, we have a lot of food for thought to go further. There are huge gaps in the knowledge of how oxytocin mediates these effects and that needs to be investigated.”

Many factors influence longevity and life expectancy, such as diet, nutrition and exercise. This new study points to the need for face-to-face interactions and physical contact, such as hand shaking and hugging, as necessary for human well-being and long-term health.

“Meaningful, positive social relationships are really what’s driving us and it’s where the future needs to go,” says Metz. “If we read the news, we can get really worried about the future. I think we need to trust in the power of positive social relationships and that, in the end, things will turn toward the better.”

Research reveals importance of social experience, especially for females

caroline.zentner — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 16:02:30 +0000

New research from the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge has shown that strong and consistent social relationships are linked to a reduced anxiety response and more exploratory behaviour among female rats — a finding that could have implications for humans because of the growing use of electronic communications.

“It is a very important finding,” says Dr. Jamshid Faraji, a research associate in Dr. Gerlinde Metz’s lab. “We, as humans, are becoming increasingly socially isolated and many of us are deprived of face-to-face visual and interactional inputs.”

He, along with researchers from Golestan ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Medical Sciences and Avicenna Institute of Neuroscience in Iran, collaborated on a study using a rat model that has shown the benefits of social experience on the brain and behaviour, and a direct transmission of those benefits from mothers to their daughters. The results were recently published inScientific Reports - Nature in an article entitled Intergenerational Sex-Specific Transmission of Maternal Social Experience.

“From a scientific perspective, we needed to find the neurohormonal correlates of social life and how that could impact our lives and, particularly, women’s lives,” says Faraji.

The researchers studied four groups of rats —males and females that lived in standard housing conditions and males and females that lived in social housing conditions. In the standard housing, two or three animals lived together while, in the social housing condition, about a dozen animals lived in a larger space.

“We found that, after three months, males and females raised in social conditions were showing unique changes in their brain structure and function, but females were showing more changes in their behaviour and brain structure compared to social males,” says Faraji. “In terms of changes in brain structure, social females were showing thicker cortexes and more density in neuronal populations.”

The researchers also wanted to know if the brain and behaviour changes they observed would also be seen in offspring, even if they weren’t raised in social housing conditions. So, all animals in the second generation were raised in standard conditions. Half of the animals had mothers that had lived in social conditions and the other half had mothers that had lived in standard conditions.

“There’s a very clear track of female lineage or mother-to-daughter pathway,” says Faraji. “Although the female offspring were not exposed to social life, they were getting all those characteristics from their social mothers.”

While there were some effects on male offspring, effects on females were more salient. They exhibited greater neural complexity, were more curious about the environment and showed reduced stress responses.

Previous research has shown females are more at risk when it comes to social isolation because of the oxytocin system, a key system that, to some extent, differentiates male and female responses to social interactions. Oxytocin, a brain chemical, has also been called the love hormone. Also, persistent social experience reduced stress hormones in social animals and their unexposed descendants. Faraji says online social interactions don’t have the same effect on the brain as face-to-face contact, which releases oxytocin, and increasing social isolation can often be linked to anxiety and depression.

“Based on my results, I would suggest that we need to encourage people to establish strong social relationships that involve face-to-face communication in consistent and constant ways,” says Faraji.

UNews - Dr. Jamshid Faraji

Social enrichment boosts levels of oxytocin, new U of L research shows

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Research reveals importance of social experience, especially for females

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