Hormones and emotions

[JohnBoy2000]

APA PsycNet

psycnet.apa.org

Plenty papers but this abstract outlines a good place to start an understanding.

"work with both humans and other species that relates anxiety- and fear-related behaviour to increased corticosteroid production / suggest a relationship between these types of behaviour and catecholamines / the role of endogenous opioids in elation is discussed (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved) "

Emotions can implicate hormonal response.

I've started looking into this area recently via being made aware that during transgender drug administration, estradiol can decrease naturally occurring levels of male libido.

And for some reason testosterone can be an aid to decrease female libido.

I have more to explore and read as I'm just getting start but, want a thread in a suitable forum to document thought and progressing understanding.


Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis being in a sense an implicated region or "axis" - a fear based adrenergic response related to catacholamine activity.


Anxiety/stress and bowel conditions clearly implicates the gut brain axis.

The Place of Stress and Emotions in the Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Our emotional state can have many consequences on our somatic health and well-being. Negative emotions such as anxiety play a major role in gut functi…

www.sciencedirect.com

 

[dopamimetic]

I recently wondered about the implications of NMDA antagonists / dissociatives being so effective anxiolytics and antidepressants (in a certain part of the population). Part is certainly memory inhibition or breaking painful over-association but as they completely stop physical reactions to anxiogenic or stressful impressions, thoughts, emotions while with the correct chemical and dosage remaining mentally fully functional, and the read fact (?) that emotions aren't really the immediate result of seeing/thinking something but there's a feedback loop of brain - body (tachycardia, adrenaline etc) - brain which gives you things like panic attacks etc. so it's pretty imaginable that NMDA antagonists could be able to break that loop the same way they influence the one of sensory input ...

Hormones for sure are responsible for sex drive. Ask anybody with long-term opioid (morphine/methadone) experiences, they suppress at least testosteron if not estradiol too. Or SSRIs, I dunno if for them the exact mechanism is known, its very different but they fuck up sex life even more and permanently in some cases. Also proglumide, some in the gut actiing chemical seems to avoid/reduce tolerance to opioids(!) and the peripherally acting loperamide helps with withdrawal, might be though that a fraction of it enters the brain.

Are there other chemical agents known which influence said gut-brain axis??? That would be a fucking wow to break the anxiety/stress response without the other effects of dissociatives.

Also, another recent question of mine, do NMDA receptors exist peripherally or only in the CNS, and if so what would a dissociative do which isn't able to cross the BBB? Maybe exactly this sort of effect???
Edit: They exist. Are involved in nociception but I didn't find anything about emotions yet. Maybe dissociatives really inhibit adrenergic responses and such, without interfering with natural / autonomic functionality like e.g. clonidine does??

Side note, orgasm is impossible while dissociated. Erection is no problem. Related?

 

[JohnBoy2000]

^^ As to NMDA affect on stress responses,



This gal (neuroscientist) has a couple ted talks, not sure if it's this one but she basically describes an experimental mouse model of what you've outlined, ketamine being used to break the stress response.


As to hormone related sexual desire etc - somewhat conflicting reports on estradiol being implicated in reduced male sex drive.
I basically made inquires in reddits transgender community and it happens the vast majority report increase in sex drive with estradiol administration.

Effectively to the tune of, "I was horny before I started hormones, and now with estradiol - I'm ridiculously horny all the time".

I was trying to equate the supposed reduced female sex drive to estrogen vs testosterone but, additional subsequent investigation strongly suggests to me that, male vs female sex drive really doesn't differ that significantly.
I attribute the societal imbalance in sexual leverages not to lack of desire on behalf of one gender and "over" desire on the other, but rather the arousal process and behavioral conveyances.

As to hormones, that seems to become a problem relative to libido obviously with age and production slows etc - common knowledge.


Hormones vs emotions however.

I personally regard emotions as just that - E-motion - outward EM wave propagation via neural activity.
Thus emotions can be effectively coded depending on neural activity (serotonin is known to modulate impulsivity as an example - thus a transmitter relative to our emotional response).

I guess relative to hormones what I'd love to understand is, can our emotional coding implicate subsequent physiological processes?

Relative to gut-brain axis and IBS etc, it seems it clearly can - but specifically in this case, could emotional "setup" per-se dictate hormone levels?
i.e. person with X emotional response - could potentially correlate with Y hormonal level.
In short could emotional setup be a novel approach to hormone replacement therapy in one sense? (sounds a little optimistic)

Given that neural activity (action potentials) directly dictate transmitter release (via vesicle membrane nerve terminal binding) - then logic outlines that emotion = neural activity = potential stress responses - given that said stress response depends on transmitter release like catecholamines.

Basically the transmitters that conventional anti-anxiety drugs target - benzo's, GABA'ergics - downregulate release (I'm trying not make things sound overly complicated/difficult-to-follow).

.....There an interesting piece that comes to mind in regards to this, let me see if I can find it;

 

[dopamimetic]

Afaik are hormones involved in too many processes to make good targets for emotion controlling agents but it's not really based on data. I was interested in testosterone blockers in earlier time when I had issues with impulse control and associated that hormone with aggressive behavior but looks like it isnt that simple. Never tried an actual antitestosteronergic but drugs which suppress it, morphine and sodium valproate. Indeed they somewhat relax you but it's an anesthetic kind of relaxation and not in a good way. Loss of drive, strength, libido, depressive tendencies and low self esteem in the longer run. The rebound is horny but not aggressive.

K for sure inhibits stress response, dissociatives are very impressive about this and the fact that they selectively inhibit negative emotions and reactions yet not positive adrenaline rush or energy, drive, if used in moderation even memory. But they come with a price tag and I hope it'd ne possible to develop more selective agents especially non-central ones which would be devoid of memory inhibition, mania and psychotic features.
At least peripheral dissos inhibit morphine tolerance which is remarkable as it indicates a strong correlation with the CNS.

Theres something strange about catecholamines in that they are involved in stress and anxiety but the same amount of the same transmitters can feel pretty good or pretty hellish dependent on consciousness (might be that it's about surges though and that stims amplify them, so not sure here) but still then it should be possible to inhibit that surge.

GABAergics primarily counters glutamatergic excitation which is primarily mediated by Ca influx though NMDAr's (?) so yeah.. Interesting are Ca channel antagonists. Need to read more about them.

Interesting point about estradiol. Would have bet that it inhibits libido but then again libido != male ability, something every user of SSRIs knows. Might it be possible to develop synthetic analogues of human sex hormones with different profile that manipulate personality, and/or partial ant/agonists !??
Phermonones make me curious too. They sell cat pheromon dispensers to calm cats. Supposedly some parfums contain pig(?) phermonones but are of disputed effectivity ... oxytocin is a weird thing which appears to have unpredictable results depending on state of consciousness and emotions. Anybody knowing more about?

I too thought that emotions are an one-way reaction outwards the CNS given that psychology tells the emotion comes before the thought but when it is about stress/fear response and such this certainly isn't true as that one is learnt akin to chronic pain and involves compex reactions. Again, as peripheral NMDAi's are analgesic, this sounds promising. But maybe they don't inhibit the response but more so the initial acquirance of it - beta blockers do that, apparently you'll get less PTSD symptoms if you take one fast enough (some hours to 1-2 days?) after the experience so epinephrine/norepinephrine are involved for sure. To me, as somebody suffering from wrecked PTSD emotions, NRIs are heavy anxiogenics and clonidine is anxiolytic yet pro-depressive.

Then again, beta blockers help with performance anxiety. But nobody uses them for general anxiety and similar to my knowledge, even when they have less side effects than clonidie and apparently the fear about excessive, vasoconstrictive alpha agonism is mostly academic and not seen even in heavy stim users ...

 

[JohnBoy2000]

A neuroscientist here, Ian Robertson speaks about modulation based approaches to stress implicating transmitter response,



Basically he details the use of self-dialogue to implicate brain function relative to stress related events.

I'm not focused on the actual dialogue or specific words he applied in this case, but the fact that outside of sports psychology and self dialogue or "cues" being used for sports practice - self dialoguing seems a lesser know brain "modality" of sorts, but these dude seems to recognize its potential application.



Here is again contending breathing in this case, which I'm less of an advocate for cause it's so damn obvious - can modulate stress related noradrenaline around the locus cerilli.

He also did a piece on "mindfulness" and its supposed affect an amygdala (stress center) size reduction via MRI.

**
To me thoughts are so closely linked with the language we use, I basically go on Chompky's contention that, "language is the basis of cognizance" - as it's responsible for neural coding.

Neural coding dictates emotions (thoughts - emotions - actions psychological paradigm) - versus hormones being responsible for emotion response:


To be there MUST be a valid intersection between emotion and therefore physiological responses, general expression - and potentially, healthy hormone levels?

I think testosterone is synthesized and definitely correlates to aggression or aggressive personality effects.

As to overall personality implication - most psychoactives to I guess in their own respects but, general implication on personality, my focus is far more the video based "self dialogue" modality.

I'm prepared to contend in preliminary terms that emotional coding, potentially implicated via self dialogue, can modulate or regulate hormones - as emotions are so closely tied to sex behavior, but so are hormones so - it makes sense they in turn implicate each other.