but incidents like this show how quickly even small gatherings can turn into something bigger. you actually do w. news from berlin stay tuned next for dr phil or take a look at the science the sociology of testosterone and there's always more on our web site today on my ash waiter thanks for joining us. by o'neill and i gave him the brand new to the environment called explosive devices the topics that affect us all on the planet strange in return and. only recent check out.

testosterone is the most important mile 6 homeowners men who are heavily influenced by testosterone a city egotistical and i enjoy taking risks but a number of european scientists have been trying to find out whether to stay strong is really as bad as its reputation. we've come to the months to university hospital to talk to talk to michelle's it's man a german specialist in the treatment of diseases that affect men he's also an expert on hormones.

true feeding out just astro is responsible for the development of a number of male physical characteristics including hair patterns on the head of it also determines beer growth affects muscles and a man's overall personality as the story gets a much more complex hormone than some people might think. most testosterone is produced in the testes but a small amount comes from the adrenal cortex. this specific sources of testosterone of allied excels the hormones that are responsible for developing male characteristics in the body called androgens the most important androgen testosterone. levels of testosterone rise dramatically during puberty and then remain at a high level but researchers have also found significant short term increases in

this home and immediately after birth. thus posts shine it's hard to say why that happens but it seems to be a part of the maturation process in the brain tissue and in the male reproductive system this bears on my list. christian of all flips and brawn at the age of 20 he discovered that he had 2 little testosterone in his body doctors later determined that the cells in his brain were not sending up the proper production signals the cause of the problem wasn't clear. at 1st both had a hard time even describing the symptoms it took a long time for doctors to come up with a proper diagnosis. as far. as concept realizing that something was wrong was a gradual process it didn't happen over night. i kept feeling worse and worse as

the target i had no energy at all and no sex drive either smegma least usman but i could feel something just wasn't right it the 1st to feel and then i was diagnosed with depression cops and when i realized that something was seriously wrong with me on hearts of other shops i went. home was a medical student at the time and a bodybuilder he kept a close eye on his metabolism and testosterone levels. and was approved but i couldn't figure out what was going on i got along well with my family and had a girlfriend i was doing well at school and then i figured out that this might have something to do with the testosterone deficiency i was in the interest of swan so i had some tests done and the levels turned out to be about 0 that's a bit low is in the sense of any. how much testosterone diminish actually need.

to average men have at least $8.00 to $12.00 normals for a leader of testosterone to anything below that represents a deficiency but the amount also depends on genetics i'm a single misinformed if you need to women's testosterone levels are much lower food about 5 to 10 percent that i've met. they use the testosterone to synthesize estrogen the primary female sex hormone. that synthesis is carried out by an enzyme called around the tanks it can be found in cells in several parts of the body including the brain adrenal glands ovaries and testes. in the face of such testosterone levels christian hove chose a potentially risky form of medical treatment. for the kids most of which i knew i needed hormone replacement therapy after other possible causes like vitamin d. or deficiency have been ruled out might also what i would add is also. one of the

side effects of hormone replacement therapy is that it suppresses sperm production which can cause infertility. just tossed around as naturally produced in the testicles but the process begins in the brain in his reciprocally in the hypothalamus sign and. hides it links the body's nervous system to the endurance system where the pituitary gland. the pitcher or treat land is divided into 2 sections the anterior portion produces 2 key hormones l h h l h is responsible for stimulating the production of testosterone in the testes. s. h. contributes to the production of spam. these 2 hormones report back to the brain and within the body is producing enough testosterone and sperm.

the brain adjusts the amounts of each as necessary. to start strong replacement therapy suppresses the hormones in the pituitary gland that are responsible for sperm production and it's like a birth control pills ovi on the pill or food in months. but if a man is to start strong deficient and wants to have children we have to take a different approach. low testosterone can have serious effects on the body but can too much of his whole mind make men overly aggressive. this is lee our home the francis center. the cognitive neuroscience is john crow dreher is a research director here dreyer has been studying the influence of testosterone on human behavior and he's found little evidence that to stop straw and stalks aggression in men. should.

be a vector that the testosterone has on human behavior is by no means clear but there is some indirect evidence that you know in 3rd sample high levels of testosterone have been found in some prison inmates who have committed serious crimes to these are you more and we did a study which indicated that patients who were given testosterone injections if you could become more aggressive to sit on the thick you know you call to show you know this about testosterone can also actually improve social behaviors who. are some pro or neutral in this you 3. so at this point there's little hard evidence pointing to a link between increased levels of testosterone and aggressive behavior. ready dreyer conducted an experiment to try to prove or disprove these climbs his 1st task was to measure the testosterone levels in the participants blood. ready ready testosterone is a fat soluble hormone so it can pass through the membranes of cells bind with

hormone receptors and then produce changes in the cell structure. testosterone can be identified and measured in various bodily fluids. including saliva urine and blood. before the experiment begins one group of participants is injected with testosterone the other group is given a placebo. and he selects who says to a group that he tried to determine whether the end. recent testosterone levels would contribute to a change in behavior as you as graph shows that both groups started out with approximately the same level of testosterone as actually looking at that short at the center we gave one group of testosterone injections its own severe mix and recorded the increase in the level of this hormone ball.

now the test subjects are going to take part in a game exercise called ultimatum the game is frequently used in behavior research it's designed to test whether a person is generous all selfish one of the players is given a sum of money and is required to share part of that with the other if the 2nd player accepts the offer the deal goes ahead as planned but if he rejects it neither player gets any money. or more at this point we observed no difference between the player who'd been given testosterone and the one who had it is still into still as at the top. now the rules of the game are going to change a bit the players will be able to use the money to reward fair behavior or punish unfair behavior and this is where dry and his colleagues observed a difference between the player who got an extra dose of testosterone and the one who didn't.

seem to be should keep his crew so it's a subtle difference and we confirmed it only in the 2nd stage of the experiment can you will see the group administered with extra testosterone imposed a more severe punishment when they believed that they had been given enough money but in the same time they also reacted more positively when given more money than expected he did you know. we observed a big difference in the behavior of the 2 groups. who. so. can testosterone also stimulate generosity in the researchers was surprised by the results but the situation is more complex than that dreyer says there is a subconscious motivation at work. to motivate young. this man aman and shows clearly that if you can improve your social status if you

cooperate with people or engage in other kinds of positive social behavior. so more so while testosterone can influence aggression commitments which it also plays a role in the ability to act with generosity should this be used in the. dry eye has been looking for more evidence to support his theory on the influence of testosterone so he's been studying brain activity. this is 2 or more testosterone based behavior that can improve a man social status report and that process could be linked to various mechanisms in the brain going to particularly a group of neural structures known as the reward system to more. improved social status generates a sense of well being like a reward that may explain the boasting trait commonly associated with excessive

manly behavior that you know is to support someone not to go upstream there's always a motivation behind generosity if someone sees you being generous they're more likely to think highly of you for example that men will probably be more generous if they know that they are being observed by women 20 simply by the. job so this indicates another link between testosterone and generous behavior. as we were getting that was to. so testosterone may be responsible for positive and me. behavior in both cases this behavior seems to be directed at preserving or even improving social status. psychologist pronto metter is an associate professor at university college in london. his research focuses on how hormones particularly to start

influence human behavior. the evidence for that myth that testosterone is directly related to masculine traits like aggression has not borne out in the data so there are plenty of results suggesting that testosterone is either weekly or unrelated to aggressive behavior at all in humans including human males so the field is still trying to unpack these kinds of the facts to understand when to start might be related to other behaviors like helping and process. as well. mettle has carried out an experiment that involves the ultimatum game similar to the model we saw earlier. it's actually a way to look at 2 kinds of behaviors one is trust to what extent is the 1st mover trusting and 2 to look at reciprocity of trust if someone is hyper trusting is

the 2nd mover going to reciprocate that trust. as in the experiment carried out by sean dray out one player was given an extra dose of testosterone the other player was given a placebo. experiment will measure the level of trust between the 2 the player administered testosterone can use his money to make sure that the other player also profits but will the 2nd player i give back some of his winnings as a gesture of gratitude or will he keep it all for himself. we found. 2 interesting facts 1st is consistent with the stereotype or testosterone reduce trust in the 1st mover so that is somewhat consistent with the stereotype strasser being related to competitiveness and threatened the environment and maybe . mobilizing more selfish social behaviors rates are going to keep money.

next the player has reversed their roles. in both tests the player with the extra testosterone shares his winnings with the other this is an example of pro social behavior. we know that reciprocity even cooperate at situations where it's going to garner status and what we found is it has offered bruce it reciprocity more arguing that in a cooperate of environment it's again a superstition pro-social behaviors that you claim status and so though in those situations to stutter and actually my pro-social. matter is convinced that to stall steroid implies a much more complex role in human behavior than research has previously thought.

for example we can promote socially positive behavior but there's always a motivating factor behind that behavior. you can imagine when we think about our leaders and people in positions of power they have expertise knowledge and experience that they're going to relate to their subordinates that's part of being a good leader that's also part of some definitions of power where you're helping others as a way to influence others in some ways so you can think of it as possible but it's also in some definitions an exertion of power. but concepts such as masculinity status and power are perceived differently in various cultures around the world will the test results differ from one country to the next. my laboratory isn't one in someone else's laboratory in germany someone else's laboratory is in

a rural part of the south of the united states that should theoretically be expected to change the results. but the effects of testosterone on the human body at the same regardless of culture and geography when christian vall found out that he was infertile he started looking for solutions. but my mother took me to see a urologist and he told her that i would never have children or that i could have a super lot of sex lies and my mom didn't think it was funny so i started reading up on my condition it is in the same advice of folks. is there a medical solution to infertility caused by testosterone deficiency. doctors it's my luck has somehow. been i. don't like something and one of the things we can do for men who suffer from this problem is to give them injections of going out or dropping hormones so they have

a gun you can to help the form of treatment has been used for years even decades where yet seems and comes the good not a trope ans include l.h. which is responsible for the production of testosterone in the testes and if s. h. which contributes to the production of sperm. the treatment was successful for christian of all for his body was able to produce testosterone and fish oil spurn for a short period of time he had the sperm frozen for later use. he starts if i listen to what the doctors told me at 1st it would have ended right there but now i can have children. one of the szell ties is a professor of psychology at friedrich alexander university in a long and his research work focuses on how testosterone affects the body

specifically bone growth. might come these would not go on with some effect from distance the one just asteroids and extra die on its counterpart in females and contribute significantly to bone strength and density engine from prenatal development to maturity. on this an income and in the. clear example during the 1st 3 months of pregnancy testosterone causes the ring fingers of the male fetus to grow longer than the index fingers in the sling fingers the. ties notes that in general women's index fingers are longer than they ring fingers in many it's just the opposite. here you can see that in this image of a man's hand. in the extreme is clearly shorter than the ring finger it. was because. testosterone clearly has an influence on bone growth even in the early

stages of pregnancy. it may also be responsible for the early development of the so called power motive. so this as a scientist so i'm interested in finding out where that motive comes from i suspect that its origins can be found in biology. here is conducting an experiment in which the participants write a fantasy narrative this may help them to determine whether they are motivated by power. the power is a common human characteristic that involves one person's efforts to have an impact on the behavior of others this motivation does not necessarily manifest itself a conscious attitudes or the beliefs that we have about ourselves our research indicates that the way we perceive ourselves actually has little to do with what makes us tick and what influences our spontaneous behaviors. and.

this part of the experiment involves a series of 10 tests and finding out how the participants respond to victory or defeat. the test results can be manipulated one participant can win up to 8 of the 10 rounds. the researchers want to find out whether any changes take place in the test subjects hormone levels. to the we found that the power motive plays a role in the response to winning or losing. those who won this had higher levels of testosterone than those who lost everything for the. man and if one of the participants is not motivated by power but wins it has no effect on the amount of testosterone in his system. alone.

we can't say that winning or losing is exclusively responsible for changes in testosterone levels. you have to take into account factors such as the individual's personality and motivation the fortunes of. those factors are shaped by testosterone during fetal brain development and. it doesn't all come down to testosterone and its influence in determining for example male finger length and the development of the power motive. women have only 10 percent of the testosterone levels found in men does that mean that they are less motivated by power. by play there's no evidence that indicates that there is a connection between the length of women's fingers and the power motive complex.

it's a complex situation that will require a lot more research. scientists have learned more in recent years about female sex hormones but the relationship between women and power has not been widely studied. the field has focused on male reproductive system and males for the past 100 years and has largely neglected looking at female sex hormones in the context of status and leadership and this is. this is a large gap in the literature today. we've come to the university of cambridge to talk to clinical psychologist simon baron cohen. part of his research focuses on how gender affects human behavior in general and the brain in particular. we've been looking at sex differences in the mind between males and females on

average and one of the tests that we use is where you have to find a shape that's hidden in a design as quickly as you can. and we find that on average man are faster at finding this target hidden in the overall design. baron cohen and his colleagues conducted behavioral studies of children and adolescents they started by testing hormone levels in numerous samples of amniotic fluid the liquid that helps protect the fetus in the womb. we've measured the testosterone during the pregnancy in the womb in the amniotic fluid so this is the baby in the womb and some women during pregnancy have a clinical procedure called amniocentesis where a needle goes into that fluid to take up some of the fluid and we can measure testosterone in the fluid and baby's very in terms of how much of the hormone they

are exposed to so boys share more and more testosterone than girls in the amniotic fluid. in the early stages of fetal development the genitalia show no signs of gender distinction but after approximately the 7th week of gestation a gene on the y. chromosome can activate a process that results in the development of testicles later testosterone plays a role in the development of masculine characteristics in several parts of the male fetus including the brain. while looking at these long term effects of the hormones presumably mediated by changes in brain development. so we're measuring the behavior but the assumption is that hormones have changed brain development in males and females because they're exposed to different amounts of the hormone. after the babies and baron cohen study were born

he measured and analyze their reaction to a series of images. what we found was that the higher the child's prenatal testosterone the last 5 contact the child makes at their 1st birthday so this was a surprise for us because you would think i contact is influenced by social factors but actually it seems to also be influenced by prenatal testosterone. the children were tested again at the age of 2 the results indicated that girls more actively sought i contact them boys did and had better verbal skills. they talk earlier and their language develops faster what we didn't know is why why do girls have this advantage in language development but now we can relate it back

to the prenatal test our storen because we found that children who had higher prenatal testosterone had smaller vocabularies years later baron cohen conducted more tests on the children. they were shown images of various facial expressions and were asked to describe the emotion the images or tried. and again we found that the higher the child's prenatal testosterone the more difficulty they have on this test of empathy which is a surprise again for us because we're finding as if even though it's 8 years later since we measured the testosterone this still in the fact that we're observing. to sum up girls did better on tests that involve verbal and social skills. boys were better at developing analytical skills. the same hormone seems to be

involved not only in social development like reading faces and language and eye contact but also enormous social skills like pattern recognition and taking things apart to see parts within the homes a bit like when the rubik cube where you have to see the pattern very quickly. the tests indicate that boys are better able to understand abstract concepts but have less empathy baron cohen has used the findings to support his theory of a possible link between testosterone and autism. we looked at their relationship between typical sex differences in autism because what is most more common than boys. so we were trying to understand why why why why does being a boy need to to a higher likelihood that you'll develop autism and the arts that we're getting is

that one factor maybe prenatal testosterone. research on this subject is still in the early stages and experts is still trying to find out what role prenatal tests tossed around plays in determining sexual differentiation in the brain. there is no evidence of pre-determination in the brain we're sort of pushed one way or the other by a hormonal effect than the early stages of fetal brain development but very much development happens later that's after birth in infancy and beyond that when the hormones act jointly with a number of extra off factors in the environment and above all in a child's social environment it's looking woods and on buttons wonders and so on and here broncho mehta has been researching the influence that hormones and social environment have on behavior development.

researchers have including my lab have looked at both directions of the facts how hormones influence dominance in status related behaviors and how one social status and the environment in turn can impact hormone fluctuations in a few back loop. also studied how people. to see for themselves and how that perception influences their behavior. do people consider themselves dominant or passive and what role does testosterone play and so what we found was that testosterone didn't have a direct effect on competitive decision making but it really depended on whether they filled out the questionnaire suggesting that they were high or low in dominance so some of our work does suggest that hormones do impacts behavior such as competitive behavior but interestingly in inconsistent with the sort of myth

about testosterone is directed fact this depends on people's personalities so the way we see ourselves. so testosterone influences our personality and in turn our personality influences our level of testosterone. high levels of testosterone a said to make men virile and dominant and society either view such men with respect or contempt testosterone also fuels competition among men perhaps it's no coincidence that this hormone was discovered during the late stages of the industrial revolution. in the 850 s. shall edward brown soko was one of the 1st scientists to speculate on the existence of substances that we now know as hormones he also regularly injected himself with the fluid extracted from animal testicles and claimed that this process improved

his sexual prowess and physical well being. testosterone has long been associated with masculinity strength and vitality. today testosterone replacement therapy has become popular among older men. in some . advertisements it's tough as a miracle cure much as brown sekhar claimed more than a century ago pharmacies doctors and drug companies make a lot of money selling testosterone preparations cells have increased sharply since 2007. dr michel's it's man is regularly consulted by older men suffering symptoms of exhaustion many worry a testosterone deficiency may be the cause and feel. sitzman tests the

patient sperm count and bone density among other procedures. in most cases he's not able to attribute the symptoms to reduced levels of testosterone. this graphic shows that testosterone levels of 10000 men ranging in age from 4 to 90 in the in year there are boys of course have very low level zines in homes in need of a good to sustain. year but the levels increase during puberty then we see high levels of testosterone slide into old age. if we rule out disease there are several reasons why testosterone levels may fall. under my skin for instance because we were given the vast majority of cases with these patients produce less testosterone simply because they're overweight. obesity is a problem for many older men and younger men too for that matter. overweight men

usually have a lot of visceral fat and that fat releases a number of harmful substances. and it can lead to insulin resistance my blood pressure and lower testosterone levels should be a good thing. one layer of body fat lies just beneath the skin a 2nd layer of visceral fat is stored in the abdominal cavity needs several vital organs. excess visceral fat can cut to strong strain production which can promote the storage of even more fat in the abdominal cavity this causes the spare time that's common among middle aged men. testosterone is often associated with doping scandals in competitive sports michele clairvaux with the german elin peak sports confederation is an expert on the use of performance enhancing substances including testosterone.

in here that's the testosterone plays a key role in regulating muscle mass and how the body responds to exercise size during a prolonged physical activity the muscles suffer a minor trauma so afterwards the body starts repairing the damage muscular tissue and increasing its strength and size. of this are massive. until recently only professional athletes use performance enhancing drugs now amateur athletes are taking them as well. for use of testosterone derivatives called anabolic steroids a commercial fitness studios that has a huge problem right now get in space and we believe that 13 to 16 percent of all clients are used to doping preparations mostly anabolic steroids and i believe it's a lot more widespread among amateur athletes than it is among the professionals.

healthy males produce 40 milligrams of testosterone every day but for those who are trying to increase muscle mass and performance that amount is too little. christiane both tried using testosterone supplements to counties hormone deficiency . to supplement interceding and you can buy testosterone boosters and capsules for justice was all i knew that they were. going to work but i tried them anyway or does it work for the companies that make these products on your emotional for the t. shirts and think that's why i bought them and of course they didn't help at all. but only anabolic steroids synthetic versions of testosterone can produce the kinds of results that the athletes want the use of steroids to enhance performance is widespread among bodybuilders. and i know unfortunately. in my own research i came across the case of

a 17 year old who was using these substances. told me it comes as a storm it was scary he was injecting more than a 1000 milligrams of testosterone derivatives a week. he was also taking dianabol steroids tablets every day or. so and all of that's a lot more than a 1000 milligrams a week and that's a dangerous amount for a 17 year old does this for. the abuse of anabolic steroids can have a number of dangerous side effects including high blood pressure strokes heart attacks and liver damage. excessive increases in testosterone can lead to reductions in spend production. to has been studying with the substances besides testosterone can influence human behavior for example cortisol a hormone that's often released in response to stress and low concentrations of

blood sugar there is some evidence that cortisol levels could impact the pathway between testosterone and behavioral outcomes specifically hormones don't include behavior directly but there's a mechanism through which they are curves pacifically one mechanism is they bind to a receptor for that specific or mark in the case of testosterone that would be the interaction receptor. this binding process takes place throughout the body like a key fitting into a lock. to believe that in stressful situations cautious all flops the testosterone receptive. cortisol levels are high that could actually intact denies or or impede the relationship between testosterone and behavior presumably through molecular pathways such as

receptor reduction and so we theorized what we called the jewel hormone hypothesis . this role playing exercises designed to test the effect of course on testosterone one participant gives a series of orders to the other if the player who's supposed to follow the orders feels stressed his behavior changes. we've found that when levels of cortisol were low that as fact occur that higher testosterone has a related to more dominance one cortisol levels are high that in fact wasn't there higher testosterone was not related to more dominance so this is suggesting that testosterone is a fax on dominant behavior in a position of leadership really depends on what's happening in the stress axis in the body. so is it possible that testosterone is just one of many substances that

can influence human behavior. more research on this subject needs to be done at this point experts have come to a variety of different conclusions. biology does not mean simplicity i think it's recognizing in appreciating the complexity that we are human beings we're dining. mix systems we develops and evolves to adapt to different environments and that hormones actually their beauty again is that they are responsive to the environment so your hormones are facts the way you behave but then the environment also affects your hormone release in general testosterone represents 2 of the major societal things about time competition and success. the cliché is that men who have too little testosterone and loses men who

have a lot of it awareness. i don't know whether i should be proud of how much testosterone i have or not. it's appends on what society thinks are desirable qualities and methods. and that concept can change depending on the culture and the era. of. testosterone is the stuff that men and made of the actual quantity is not so important that every man needs at least a minimum amount. of years with it to have fun so since i started testosterone replacement therapy i felt a lot better on the depression and lack of energy disappeared in 2 weeks and things just kept getting better for me i'm not confused and i'm happy anymore. so there's no simple $1.00 to $1.00 link between testosterone and male aggression or quest for power latest findings indicate it's social and cultural environment

factors that determine testosterone so fixed on man he behaved. explorer. a naturalist. renaissance man. alexander fun almost to. the mark is 250th birthday for me as we talk with unreliable historian law author. on the odd extra. 30 minutes odd detail.

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this is deja vu news live from berlin tunisia paris for a historic post that presidential elections that should see the 1st handover of power from one freely and fairly elected leader to the next in the country that sparked the arab spring. also coming up. a nation celebrates the life and legacy of one of the most controversial and laid.