Comments on: Love, Trust, and a Hormone

By: Roger

Roger — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:03:50 +0000

Isn’t eleven,that is Charlie’s age isn’t it,a bit young for all of this?It almost sounds like the type of changes you should be seeing at fourteen or fifteen.

I never experienced most of puberty,and I was never sure why.My testosterone levels have always been in the low 3’s.I started to have fine,slow growing facial hair,at age seventeen, but no other sign of puberty.I was always told my testosterone levels had to be much lower to have hypogonadism,and thus receive hormone treatment.

I always thought it might be due to irreversible damage to the pituitary,from having meningitis as a baby,but if I do indeed,have mitochochondrial disease,a real possibility,it is probably due to inefficient metabolism of testosterone.

By: Kristina Chew, PhD

Kristina Chew, PhD — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:24:20 +0000

And there’s more than one way to express trust, love, ad other emotions…..

By: Phil Schwarz

Phil Schwarz — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:16:01 +0000

What comes to mind for me, is Ralph Savarese’s arguments in _Reasonable People_ against the reduction of psychological phenomena as complex as emotions — never mind *trust* and *love*! — directly to comparatively simple biological mechanisms. There are undoubtedly many layers of “software” running on the “hardware”, and it is almost certainly the myriad of units of state, and state-changes, in those layers of “software”, that inform high-level phenomena such as trust and love. And those state-changes come not just from hormonal input, but from sensory input, memory, and internal computation.

By: AnneC

AnneC — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 01:18:15 +0000

The notions some have about oxytocin and autism frighten me rather a lot. I have had enough trouble trying to figure out who I can trust without someone trying to chemically coerce me into trusting people.

By: Marla

Marla — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:14:34 +0000

It will be interesting to see new advances in this area.

I am glad we are not the only ones dealing with moods changing quickly. I have to remind myself that all kids her ages are going through similar mood swings. It can be hard for me to tell the difference sometimes.

By: Leanne

Leanne — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 18:20:37 +0000

Interesting. Patrick’s communication issues have absolutely nothing to do with not recognizing and reacting to emtions though.

By: FXSmom

FXSmom — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 15:25:54 +0000

wow…that is interesting!! Thanks for sharing. We are in the throes of hormones with Matty too. We never know if it is “fragile x” or “hormones”