Watabe, M.（渡部 幹）, Kato, T. A.（加藤隆弘）, Tsuboi, S.（坪井 翔）,Ishikawa, K., Hashiya, K., Monji, A, Utsumi, H., & Kanba, S. (2013). Minocycline, a microglial inhibitor, reduces ‘honey trap’ risk in human economic exchange. Scientific Reports, 3, 1685. doi: 10.1038/srep01685.
Recently, minocycline, a tetracycline antibiotic, has been reported to improve symptoms of psychiatric disorders and to facilitate sober decision-making in healthy human subjects. Here we show that minocycline also reduces the risk of the ‘honey trap’ during an economic exchange. Males tend to cooperate with physically attractive females without careful evaluation of their trustworthiness, resulting in betrayal by the female. In this experiment, healthy male participants made risky choices (whether or not to trust female partners, identified only by photograph, who had decided in advance to exploit the male participants). The results show that trusting behaviour in male participants significantly increased in relation to the perceived attractiveness of the female partner, but that attractiveness did not impact trusting behaviour in the minocycline group. Animal studies have shown thatminocycline inhibits microglial activities. Therefore, this minocycline effect may shed new light on the unknown roles microglia play in human mental activities.
脳内免疫細胞であるミクログリアを不活性化させる抗生物質、ミノサイクリンを実験参加者に投与し、信頼ゲームでの意思決定について偽薬群との比較検討を行った。過去の研究では、ミノサイクリンのミクログリア不活性効果は人々により「理性的な」決定を行わせる可能性が示されていたが、本研究は、異性の外見的魅力の効果について調べた。魅力的な異性に対しては、その異性への信頼度が低くても信頼ゲームにおいて投資行動が見られることは過去の研究でわかっており、本研究でも偽薬群においてそれは追認されたが、ミノサイクリン投与群においてはその傾向はみられなかった。