As I've been following this blog, I've been keeping in mind the role of trust and human contact involved in oxytocin production. The reward and reinforcement of this hormone as it facilitates and strengthens human relations is very interesting.

This latest post makes me wonder if I haven't misunderstood the sequence of triggers. Somehow I'd been putting contact ahead of trust and the other mental processes involved. But, that seems to be just a matter of assuming that everything ties to one of the five senses. Instead, it seems that the idea of contact is the key here. Of course, there are psychological mechanisms that provide distinction between real, imagined, and remembered. But, activation of a physical sense is not necessary for reviewing memories and imagining alternative outcomes.

So, it seems to make sense that we can have the reward and reinforcement of oxytocin as we anticipate possible experiences in our decision making process.

My initial reason for responding to this was that my own experiences at the movies. My more intense experiences seemed to be closely associated to the more intense experiences of my youth. As such, I tend to have very strong empathy for younger characters who are portrayed as have experiences similar to my own. And, there's a kind of rescue instinct that comes into play. This then gets further reinforced as I fantasize about being in such situations--enough so, that I can experience stress responses as well as what I now know as that oxytocin empathic response.

Since, I expect that such triggered stress responses involve real adrenaline, as I would need if I was actually considering the possibility of entering a potentially hostile situation, I suppose that I should expect that there is a real oxytocin release during empathic fantasies. As much as I've been considering this subject of oxytocin, I'm beginning to believe that I can trigger a release of this hormone almost at will.

But, I have to say that I'm fascinated by the possibility that what are now ancient memories can influence a hormone that I had originally thought was only for the here and now.

You write:
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So, we cry at movies because THOMAS is a fuzzy system. It does not differentiate between actual human beings and flickering images of human beings. Either one is enough to kick THOMAS into high gear and impel our empathy.
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This leaves me a bit puzzled. THOMAS makes sense for empathy in general, but the "it" in your sentence above, in not differentiating, is doing something, perhaps shutting some reality-testing system down. Can oxytocin do that?

--With warm regards,

Norm
Norm Holland

Pussy