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Query: UNIPROT:P01178 (oxytocin)
 15,767 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Social subordination in female macaques is imposed by harassment and the threat of aggression and produces reduced control over one's social and physical environment and a dysregulation of the limbic-hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis resembling that observed in people suffering from psychopathologies. These effects support the contention that this particular animal model is an ethologically relevant paradigm in which to investigate the etiology of stress-induced psychological illness related to women. Here, we sought to expand this model by performing a discriminate analysis (DA) on 33 variables within three domains; behavioral, metabolic/anthropomorphic, and neuroendocrine, collected from socially housed female rhesus monkeys in order to assess whether exposure to social subordination produces a distinct phenotype. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was also calculated to determine each domain's classification accuracy. DA found significant markers within each domain that differentiated dominant and subordinate females. Subordinate females received more aggression, showed more submissive behavior, and received less of affiliation from others than did dominant females. Metabolic differences included increased leptin, and reduced adiponectin in dominant compared to subordinate females. Dominant females exhibited increased sensitivity to hormonal stimulation with higher serum LH in response to estradiol, cortisol in response to ACTH, and increased glucocorticoid negative feedback. Serum oxytocin, CSF DOPAC and serum PACAP were all significantly higher in dominant females. ROC curve analysis accurately predicted social status in all three domains. Results suggest that socially house rhesus monkeys represent a cogent animal model in which to study the physiology and behavioral consequences of chronic psychosocial stress in humans.
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PMID:Social subordination produces distinct stress-related phenotypes in female rhesus monkeys. 2224 48

Why share when access to benefits is uncertain is crucial to our understanding of the evolution of humans' extensive cooperation. Here, we investigated some of the different human sharing hypotheses and potential neuroendocrine mechanisms, in one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. The strongest predictor of sharing across food types was the presence of enduring and mutually preferred grooming partners, more than harassment, direct signalling, or trade. Moreover, urinary oxytocin levels were higher after the sharing of both individually and jointly acquired resources compared with controls. We conclude that the emotional connection inherent in social bonds was a key factor determining sharing patterns, with the oxytocinergic system potentially facilitating long-term cooperative exchanges. Testing for the role of social bonds in increasing predictability of sharing behaviour, a feature frequently overlooked, may help us to identify the evolutionary drivers of resource sharing and mechanisms that sustain delayed reciprocity between non-kin.
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PMID:Social bonds facilitate cooperative resource sharing in wild chimpanzees. 3030 38

The nonapeptide oxytocin (and its fish homolog isotocin (IT)) is an evolutionarily-conserved hormone associated with social behaviors across most vertebrate taxa. Oxytocin has traditionally been regarded as a prosocial hormone, but studies on social cognition in mammalian models suggest it may play a more nuanced role in modulating social discrimination based on social salience and stimulus valence. Here we test IT and its role in regulating female social decision-making and anxiety behaviors in a live-bearing fish with a male coercive mating system. Gambusia affinis males engage in a forced mating strategy, with frequent harassment and attempted copulatory thrusts directed towards unwilling females. Exogenous IT produced anxiolytic responses in female G. affinis that altered exploration (time in center of tank) but not time in dark vs. light regions of the tank. Exogenous IT also produced context-specific changes in social tendency: IT-treated G. affinis females spent less time associating with males while association time with conspecific females was not altered. Further, while overall activity levels were not changed by IT treatment, the amount of social behaviors IT-treated females directed towards males, but not females, was reduced. Our results support the social salience hypothesis of oxytocin action in a teleost and suggest that oxytocin's critical input into social cognitive processing is conserved across vertebrate taxa.
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PMID:Isotocin increases female avoidance of males in a coercive mating system: Assessing the social salience hypothesis of oxytocin in a fish species. 3090 35