ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the neurobiology of relationships, with implications for clinical practice. Family therapists have long adopted a multilevel systemic view, highlighting not only interior family dynamics, but also larger contextual issues. Neurobiology brings to this multilayered discourse the micro level of brain/body processes. Interpersonal neurobiology integrates brain, body, and relationships, exploring the recursive impacts of our physical-neurological selves and social processes, embedded within the larger sociocultural context. Social neuroscience studies the ways in which interpersonal experience impacts our physical and psychological well-being. Neuroplasticity includes synaptogenesis, neurogenesis, and myelinogenesis; all occur in response to experience, and can continue throughout life. Neuroscientists study brain–body processes by examining hormones and neurotransmitters and their impact on behavior, health, and well-being. A natural antidote to cortisol is oxytocin, both a neurotransmitter in the brain and a hormone in the blood. Neuroscientists have studied prairie voles, monogamous rodents found in the Midwest.
