Trust Hormone?

I'm sure you are being bombarded with wishes that 2007 is the best ever - so add mine to the wish pile.

Rather than New Year Resolutions we had New Year Dissolutions - I must double my chocolate intake, swear amd cuss more, laugh raucously at my own jokes (in my own lectures adds Dave...), smirk knowingly while cycling...

My efforts to produce a smirk met with the kind of raucous laughter Dave was to reserve for his own jokes, (according to the Dissolution he drew from the bowl).

However, I feel that my capacity to generate smirks is not the full story about my non-verbal abilities after doing a test which assesses how readily one can read emotion on the basis of viewing the eyes only - have a go by cutting and pasting the link. The test is one by Baron-Cohen, and it uses (perhaps) some old Silvan Tomkins' pictures plus many luscious additions.

This is the full excerpt that Worldscience published:

* "Trust hormone" now tied to "mind reading" -- and
increasingly, autism:
An unusual hormone has a growing list of documented
powers, some of them surprising -- and intriguing to
scientists hunting autism treatments.

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/061206_oxytocin.htm

And break those resolutions early, I say.
Dx