Respond to the following questions after reading journals, articles or studies. Responses should be written in short paragraphs referring to, or citing information/data the article presents.

Source of Article: Scientific American Mind
Title: The Hormone that helps you read minds Date: August 28, 2007

(1) What new information did you learn?
Everyone has accepted the fact that hormones can make you amorous, aggressive and erratic. But lately, neuroscience has found evidence that the hormone oxytocin can enhance at least one cognitive power which is the ability to understand the main, essential part of what others are thinking. Oxytocin is a peptide hormone composed of nine amino acids. Produced in the brain, it improves the ability to read human minds.

(2) What is your opinion of the research processes? Is it ethical or exploitive? What are the weaknesses and biases to the research?
The research processes seem like drugging organisms however the oxytocin is very efficient in reading an organism’s mind which I find interesting. I think these processes are exploitive because of the fact that they use organisms for their experiments using oxytocin. However they can complete their research in this way. The experiments with the rodents aren’t complete because there has been other studies against the studies of manipulating a rodent’s mind using oxytocin. The studies against the studies of oxytocin used on rodents is bias because they say that oxytocin may be involved in human social behavior and cognition.


(3) What further research could be conducted in this area?
How oxytocin improves the theory of mind is still an unanswered question. Therefore, there should be more research aimed at answering this main question.



(4) How does this information relate to you?
This information doesn’t have much relation to me, but I am very interested in using oxytocin to read one’s mind.

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