Oxytocin influences processing of socially relevant cues in the ventral tegmental area of the human brain

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a social incentive delay task to test the hypothesis that oxytocin modulates the neural processing of socially relevant cues in the VTA, hereby facilitating behavioral response.

Why It Was Studied

Evidence accumulates that the neuropeptide oxytocin plays an important role in mediating social interaction among humans and that a dysfunction in oxytocin-modulated brain mechanisms might lie at the core of disturbed social behavior in neuropsychiatric disease.

Animal data point toward the ventral tegmental area (VTA) as the brain site where this modulation takes place.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults and adults, women only.

Twenty-eight nulliparous women (not taking any hormones) received intranasal oxytocin or placebo in a double-blind randomized clinical trial with a parallel-group design.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and parallel-group study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Oxytocin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

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

The Oxytocin group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Cues, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Motivation, Oxygen, Oxytocin and Pattern Recognition, Visual.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Anticipation, dopamine, faces, mesolimbic system, punishment and salience.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2013 (Biological psychiatry), a journal based in United States.

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