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Published online 6 November 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.222
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Drug calms violent rats
Fixing a single neurotransmitter system suppresses pathological aggression.
Researchers have found a drug that can reduce aggressive behaviour in feral rats that have been trained to be violent. Although the find may not lead directly to a cure for pathological violence in humans, it does unpick a mechanism behind such violence, the researchers say, which could open the door to future treatments.
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'The serotonin system does plays an important role in abnormally violent behavior in rats' is proved by the study. But, how is this serotonin system is controlled in animal and human brain? Animal brain is only little developed as compared to human brain as far as thinking ability (mind) is concerned. So the ability, to think or to produce thoughts, of the animal mind is much less than that of the human mind. THOUGHTS are mainly responsible for most of the behaviours in human being. So comparision of human beings, with animal on behaviour aespect (it is good that it is not done in present study, but I can guess from the past trend, it may be tried in future) will not be a progress in the right direction. Now, the time has come to study and make research vigourously not only in the field of human mind and thoughts but also in the field of human soul, to chane the human beings into super human beings.
Dear musafir, the development of animal or human brains has little to do with aggression. It is very doubtful that "thoughts" drive our behaviour. Emotions seem to be more the cause for actions, including the act of thinking or reasoning. You want to make research in the human soul, but first you would have to find it. This study is a good advance in the understanding of the brain, the creator of the mind, your experiences and memories, your feelings, your planning, your consciousness. In a word, yourself. Human brains are not that much different from many animals, it is more a matter of quantity that of quality. Best regards
The fact that sparing males will be more aggressive in a hunt for a top male isn't particularly impressive - and switching off this mechanism using a immitation of Huxleys Soma is even less so. The more intersting question is what will actually happen to group dynamics in males when this magic bullet is unleashed? I doubt if Soma-plus is going to sit quietly on the shelves and like so many other bio-medical miracles the cure is not going to be without a maalise of side-effects and unthought about repurcussions!
As someone with long-term and personal experience with antidepressants, I have come to accept that a simple neurotransmitter modifying my emotional response really can fix what appeared to be complex negative thought patterns. Therapy never did much for me, though I gave it several tries. Sometimes it really is a simple answer. As Pau Cortes notes: reasoning generally arises from emotion, not the other way around. Based on this, I wouldn't be surprised if such a simple treatment has a dramatic effect in treatment of human pathological violence. I'd also like to add: comparison of these drugs to soma couldn't be farther from the truth, I am a brighter and more clever person - I am more of myself, not less.
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Manipulating man's thoughts and actions has never been an intriguing facet to deal with society's concerns throughout the centuries. This research deals with it at the molecular level, which moves closer and closer to a technology similar to designing computer algorithms. This is indeed very promising, as it may create a domino effect to all other "nuisances" that human behavior can ever offer. However, there are some other implications to consider. [I have already posted a more detailed comment on this at Nature Blogs that pointed to this article.]
It seems likely that many if not all of the comments posted here are being provided here by people outside of neuroscience, but there is nothing particularly surprising in this finding, nor is it frankly some great new piece of news. The serotonin system has been implicated in affective regulation for a long time, we have known that the auto receptor has a great deal to do with how much serotonin the projection system pumps out, and that a central serotonergic deficit results in poor impulse control, particularly impulse control over aggression. In this sense these findings only confirm a very large body of pre-existing work. The comments on the other hand speak to another set of issues, particularly how much trouble people have excepting that human brains for all their cortical complexity do not operate according to a radically different principles than the brains of other mammals. I think it's sad that we have so much trouble accepting that. Certainly there is enormous neuroscience that supports massive functional homologies with respect to all the major neurotransmitter systems. Perhaps some people feel demeaned by these similarities. Douglas F. Watt, Ph.D., Boston University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
I can see a negative use of this information by military powers worldwide. Imagine having an army of soldiers who are super aggressive.
Dear Nancy, I think the military has known how to train humans to be more aggressive for quite some time now. It's called boot camp.