Effects of intranasal oxytocin on the neural basis of face processing in autism spectrum disorder

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The present study examined the effects of oxytocin on the neural basis of face processing in adults with Asperger syndrome (AS).

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 14 individuals taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are children, teenagers, young adults and adults, both men and women.

A group of 14 individuals with AS and a group of 14 neurotypical control participants performed a face-matching and a house-matching task during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the individuals and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Oxytocin group a baseline to be compared against.

In the crossover set-up each of the individuals took both Oxytocin and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Amygdala, Brain Mapping, Child Development Disorders, Pervasive, Discrimination, Psychological, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Oxygen.

Author keywords: autism, fMRI, face processing, oxytocin and social cognition.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 14 individuals.

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.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 3 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

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

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