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Published online 5 June 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.876
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Brain chemical helps us tolerate foul play
Serotonin allows us to keep our cool when faced with life's unfairness.
Controlling your anger and reacting sensibly when someone treats you badly can be a problem. And if you have low levels of serotonin, it can be even more of a problem, a new study has found.
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On the bright side, perhaps union employees will enjoy gifts of cheese and chocolate before each contract vote.
Talking about serotonin and its link with the level of anger or mood changes, one needs to look at how can this study can be useful to psychologists. The work needs more experimentation and validation of the same. I liked the article since I got to know why I retaliate when someone behaves harshly to me. It is a good piece of work and must be continued to validate the needs of psychologists, counselors, and scientists related in this field. The line 'Our desire for fairness also seems to be a universal trait.' is true, no doubt.
a good report... can u pls tell me how u record d serotonin levels? does it have anything to do with the reward and punishment centers?
the question begs how can we stimulate serotonon production in the brain at critical times ?
Serotonin has a structure like other bioactive chemicals and chemists often try to set its structure - activity relation with that of body system in a manner best known to them. Biologists try to lament certain relationship based on the surrounding behavior and attainments of final structure after action based performance. However scientists in general forget that brain function is also associated with light and magnetism. If content of serotonin alone would have been a problem in hetching out a solution then by now all problems related to human behavior would have been solved. Light is well known for its wave and particle nature and magnetism is well defined even outside the magnetic field. Under such a situation commission or omission of light and magnetism along with serotonin or any other brain chemical has its inbuilt significance. Researchers may like to consider it.Regards Dr. R. Dayal Yadav
The real cause of aggressive response to injustice may at times be for the purpose of self assertion only thus aimed at getting a payoff higher than the material loss caused by the injustice. Thus the aggressor as well s the responder both get what they wanted and are happy in that sense. Lack of serotonin may be prompting people to play these unhealthy games. Serotonin replenishment has been used for quite some time for the purpose of managing behavior problems. As such the observations made by the subject study is not surprising.
But wait - no mention is made of the study participants' gender. One cannot begin to make sense of aggression without taking testosterone into account. This oversight renders the article useless.