Oxytocin modulates amygdala, insula, and inferior frontal gyrus responses to infant crying: a randomized controlled trial

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Oxytocin facilitates parental caregiving and mother-infant bonding and might be involved in responses to infant crying.

Infant crying provides information about the physical status and mood of the infant and elicits parental proximity and caregiving.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 21 women taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

Blood oxygenation level-dependent responses to infant crying were measured in 21 women who were administered oxytocin and 21 women who were administered a placebo.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Some women received a placebo instead of Oxytocin, giving a reference point.

In a randomized controlled trial the researchers investigated the influence of intranasally administered oxytocin on neural responses to infant crying with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Amygdala, Auditory Perception, Cerebral Cortex, Crying, Empathy, Frontal Lobe and Neurons.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 21 women.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 2 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2011 (Biological psychiatry), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.