Frozen with Fear? How the Love Hormone Gets You Moving - Yahoo! News:
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In frightening situations, people tend to freeze, but not recent moms, who charge ahead. Now a new study shows how the brain speedily delivers the hormone oxytocin — which new mothers have in elevated levels, starting with childbirth — to where it's needed, freeing them to protect their young.
The study, done in rats, revealed that oxytocin rushes to the brain region governing fear, called the amygdala, courtesy of special cells that act like a neurological expressway.
Further, when the researchers provoked these cells into sending oxytocin to the amygdala, it diminished the rats' fearful responses to being startled.
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