| maps • volume xv number 1 • Spring 2005 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Making Connections MDMA Research on the Mechanisms of Affiliation and Trust By Alan Page Fiske, Lynn Fairbanks, David Jentsch, Wael Salomeh, and Matthew Jorgensen, UCLA |
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One of the most important theoretical problems in
social science is understanding what makes people feel
solidarity, affection, and trust. Creating these connections
among communities is the most important humanitarian
and political problem facing humankind. Although we
still know little about how people form social bonds, recent
discoveries are providing valuable guideposts to lead us
toward the answers. Social scientists are beginning to
understand the kinds of interaction that create these feelings, while neuroscientists are beginning to understand
the chemical processes and brain areas involved. But social
scientists and neuroscientists rarely team up to work in
this area, and existing research methods have serious limitations. We are taking an innovative, integrated approach
to understanding sociability using a new research tool:
MDMA.
MDMA is unique in evoking powerful feelings of trust, openness, affection, and identification; no other drug has comparable effects. Consequently, we have launched a program of research using MDMA to understand the natural behavioral, neurochemical, and neuro-anatomical pathways through which people form everyday social bonds. Because MDMA makes people feel close to each other, it must act on the mechanisms in the brain that normally respond to the social experiences that bring people together. By studying the neural mechanisms by which MDMA generates affection and affiliation, we aim to illuminate the kinds of social experiences that naturally activate these mechanisms. Overall, our goal is to understand how social interaction affects the neurobiological processes that in turn create affection, trust, and commitment -- leading to behavior which in turns elicits these sentiments in others. Understanding these processes may eventually illuminate the mechanisms of love and close relationships, teamwork, ethnocentrism and xenophobia, intra-group cooperation and extra-group aggression, as well as privide insight into autism, psychopathy, personality disorders, and social anxiety disorder.
By studying the neural
mechanisms by which
MDMA generates
affection and affiliation,
we aim to illuminate the
kinds of social experiences
that naturally activate
these mechanisms.
We have an excellent and well-integrated team with
unique facilities at UCLA for this research. One member
of our team is a psychological anthropologist, Alan Page
Fiske, whose ethnological research examines how people
around the world create and sustain social bonds. Fiske is
Director of the FPR-UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and
Development; he was also the co-founder and Director of
the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture.
Another member of our team is a behavioral neuroscientist, David Jentsch. His specialty is neuropsychopharmacologic research in vervet monkeys and rodents, including
examinations of the behavioral effects of MDMA. Another
team member is a psychologist/primatologist, Lynn
Fairbanks, who studies the genetics and neurochemistry
of social behavior. In her research, she has developed a
number of observational protocols for assessing vervet
personality, particularly sociability. Fairbanks is the Director of the UCLA Vervet Research Colony (VRC), one of
the few research facilities in the world
where primates are socially housed.
Matthew Jorgensen, a psychologist who
coordinates all research activities at
the VRC, has 14 years of experience in
behavioral research with nonhuman
primates. Another team member, Wael
Salameh, is an endocrinologist who
studies behavioral genetics, especially
the impact of X gene overdosage on
the altered sociality of XXY patients.
Salameh is an expert on hormone assays
and molecular biology methods. Three
members of this group are collaborating
to teach the first UCLA graduate course
on the Neurobiology of Sociality. Our
team also has close colleagues ready to
collaborate in brain imaging, cognitive
neuroscience, social psychology, and social anthropology.
Our primary and ultimate goal is to understand the
neurobiology of human trust, identification, solidarity,
affection, love, and forgiveness. We want to determine
whether MDMA affects social motives and emotions
through the action of oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine,
and cortisol--chemicals which are known to be involved
in maternal care and pair-bonding. We also aim to locate
the regions in the brain where MDMA acts, along with
the genes that it activates and the receptors involved. The
first stages of our research focus on animals because many
kinds of neurophysiological research are only feasible in
animals. What exactly does that mean? Also, are animals
killed in this study? I think a brief discussion of the study
ethics is necessary, since animal research is fairly controversial in our membership. Moreover, mammals share
many basic neurophysiological mechanisms, despite differences in the behavioral expression of these mechanisms.
Working with rats and vervets, we are currently studying
how MDMA affects social interaction while the drug is in
the brain and afterwards. Specifically, we are looking at
whether MDMA increases attraction, reduces social anxiety, or both. Later we want to identify the neurohormones
that are crucial for communication between neurons in the
areas of the brain that MDMA activates and that mediate
sociability. Almost nothing is known about the effects of
MDMA on animal social behavior, so our pioneering studies will provide an essential foundation for our own and
others' subsequent research.
The next stage of our research -- for which we seek funding -- will use MDMA to study the neurobiology of group formation, trust, and affection in vervet monkeys. The vervet is an Old World monkey that is an ideal model for research in this area. Vervets live in stable matrilineal societies. Females remain in their natal group with their mothers and female kin, while males leave at puberty and seek admission into neighboring groups. Social relationships within groups are generally affiliative and cooperative, while relationships between groups are hostile. Group members join together to defend their territorial borders against incursions from outsiders. In order to transfer between groups, males must overcome the natural hostility of the new group members to outsiders, and must also compete with other males for dominance. In the wild 
As the first step in a series of studies using MDMA to explore the neurobiology of sociality and aggression in this context, we now propose to measure the acute and long-term effects of MDMA on the quality of social relationships following vervet male immigration. For years, Fairbanks and her collaborators have studied the processes of male immigration and social integration at the UCLA VRC. In the course of this research, Fairbanks and her collaborators have developed methods to measure subtle variations in social behavior, personality, and interaction. This expertise will enable us to accurately assess the social effects of MDMA on the vervet immigrants. In collaboration with our pharmacology colleague, William Melega, we will initially determine the doses of MDMA that, for vervets, correspond to prevalent human recreational doses. Then we will launch our study.
We expect that MDMA will act by reducing xenophobia and
hostility toward outsiders, enabling unfamiliar animals to establish
positive social relationships more quickly and effectively.
In the first study, four groups will be formed with four
males and four females per group. In two of the groups,
all of the males will be given MDMA at regular intervals,
probably once a week, during the group formation process.
In the other two groups, the male vervets will undergo the
same procedures using a saline control solution. Within
each group, males will vary in their prior familiarity with
one another. Thus, each of the eight male subjects will
have potential relationships with familiar males, unfamiliar males, and unfamiliar females. We have developed
(and used in a number of other studies) standardized
observational scoring methods for measuring social bonding, including rates of social approaches initiated and
received, time spent in contact and proximity, greeting
behavior, grooming, and indicators of anxiety in a social
context. Conflict and aggression are measured by scoring
dominance displays, threats, chases, and fights. This study
will take two years, due to the limited number of vervets
ready for group transfer each year, and the importance of
following up each group for several months to determine
the long-term social relationships that emerge. (However,
when funding is assured for at least one year, we will get
the project underway, since pilot data will enable us to
plan future studies and prepare grant applications to NSF
and NIH.)
We expect that MDMA will act by reducing xenophobia and hostility toward outsiders, enabling unfamiliar animals to establish positive social relationships more quickly and effectively. We expect that it will have a lesser effect on relationships among familiar individuals. If this is the case, then we will begin to be able to differentiate between two important components of sociality: overcoming hostility versus facilitating attachment. The proposed study is the necessary foundation for future studies with rodents and vervets, using agents to block the action of oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, serotonin and cortisol, to determine which specific neuro-chemical systems are involved. Eventually we will attempt to identify the genes whose expression affects sociability, using transgenic or knockout mice.
Mammals share many basic neurochemical processes, so it makes scientific sense to begin with rats and vervets. However, no other animal forms bonds as complex as the human relationships we ultimately aim to understand. Ultimately, we want to use our findings in this animal research to determine how humans form affectionate, trusting, compassionate, committed relationships. Building on our animal work, we plan to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to locate the regions of the human brain that are activated by MDMA. The first study will consist of fMRI scanning of people interacting with the experimenter through the subject's video goggles and headphone. We will compare brain activation without MDMA and with administration of three levels of MDMA. We will correlate brain activation with MDMA dose and with self-report of closeness, empathy, and trust toward the experimenter. Previous imaging studies of activation induced by MDMA have focused on psychological tests which, if anything, blunt the emotional experience. Our goal is to observe the changes in human brain activation facilitated by MDMA when subjects have the opportunity to feel close to others, including others they love. However, we judge that to develop our research beyond the current rat studies, the study with greatest potential is the vervet study outlined above. We have to begin by showing that vervet response to MDMA resembles the human response. If we can get the funds to demonstrate that MDMA reduces hostility and/or enhances affiliativeness among vervets, we will have excellent prospects for obtaining large scale funding from NSF and NIH for research that will rapidly advance the understanding of the neurobiology of human connection. All of us have obtained substantial grants from these sources for other research, so we are optimistic that the data we collect in the vervet study will enable us to get major federal funding for the MDMA studies that will build on this innovative approach. Our ultimate goal is to understand how these affiliative processes in the human brain are activated by social experience, and how these brain processes motivate and orient social action. The brain is a social organ, and we want to understand how it mediates social relationships, including how the brain is affected by social relations. We hope our brain research will lead us to a better understanding of what human actions enable people to open themselves to others, love, trust, and forgive. If we can get the funds to demonstrate that MDMA reduces hostility and/or enhances affiliativeness among vervets, we will have excellent prospects for obtaining large scale funding from NSF and NIH for research that will rapidly advance the understanding of the neurobiology of human connection.
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