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"A new study carried out at the University of Haifa has found that the hormone oxytocin, the "love hormone," which affects behaviors such as trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, such as jealousy and gloating. "Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: when the person's association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments," explains Simone Shamay-Tsoory who carried out the research."

"For a hormone, oxytocin is pretty famous. It's the "cuddle chemical" -- the hormone that helps mothers bond with their babies. Salespeople can buy oxytocin spray on the internet, to make their clients trust them. It's known for promoting positive feelings, but more recent research has found that oxytocin can promote negative emotions, too. The authors of a new review article in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, takes a look at what oxytocin is really doing."

"SCIENCE confirmed last week what A. J. Jacobs had already feared. "I knew that my testosterone was at a low point when I found myself wearing my wife's polka-dotted breast-feeding pillow strapped around my waist in an attempt to feed a bottle of milk to my infant son," said Mr. Jacobs, a writer who lives in Manhattan with his wife and three young children. He and new fathers everywhere were calibrating the state of their manhood after the release of a much-discussed study of 600 men that indicated that testosterone - the defining hormone of maleness - drops after a man becomes a father. If that were not enough, the study seems to suggest that practice actually makes imperfect when it comes to the hours men spend in rearing children. It found that the more time a man spends each day, say, strapping Crocs onto his toddler's feet or helping her off the monkey bars, the more the hormone flags. In a Mr. Mom era, where society encourages (and family schedules often demand) that men enthusiastically embrace a 50-50 split of every parenting duty short of breast-feeding, the question on many fathers' minds is whether all of their efforts to be the ideal contemporary man are also making them less of one. "

"The hormone oxytocin, which is known to be important in trust, may also be involved in a sense of well-being. According to new research, women who show large increases in oxytocin when they are trusted also report being more satisfied with life and less depressed."

"The hormone oxytocin has come under intensive study in light of emerging evidence that its release contributes to the social bonding that occurs between lovers, friends, and colleagues. Oxytocin also plays an important role in birth and maternal behavior, but until now, research had never addressed the involvement of oxytocin in the transition to fatherhood."

"Exposure to even dim light at night is enough to cause physical changes in the brains of hamsters that may be associated with depression, a new study shows."