Hug Hormone Oxytocin Boosts Bonding By Releasing Cannabis-Like Molecules

By Justine Alford | iflscience

Whichever persona you prefer – the love molecule, cuddle chemical or hug hormone – oxytocin plays a big role in bonding. Spraying monkeys with the stuff, for example, has been found to positively affect their social behavior, making them more communicative and promoting interaction with others. Among many other things, weed also exerts similar effects on human behavior, but how exactly it does this has been hazy.

Now, a new study is offering us clues, and a link between these two very different substances. It turns out that oxytocin might make social interactions more rewarding and pleasurable by stimulating our own cannabinoid system. According to the research, it does this by triggering the release of another wonderfully nicknamed chemical, the “bliss molecule” anandamide, coined as such due to the fact that the brain receptors it activates lead to increased motivation and happiness.

This is the first time that this marijuana-like neurotransmitter has been shown to contribute to the reward of being social, and also offers us further insight into how oxytocin acts on the brain. Importantly, these findings could help us understand the mechanisms underlying certain social impairments, for example in those with autism, suggesting a possible avenue to explore for treatment.

Rewinding a little bit, endocannabinoids, like anandamide, are molecules our own body produces that act on the same system that cannabis does, binding to receptors on various cells throughout the body called the cannabinoid receptors. Previous work has found that the endocannabinoid system is involved in regulating neuronal signaling from the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a brain region shown to be critical for the effects of oxytocin on social reward.

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