Early life stress modulates amygdala-prefrontal functional connectivity: implications for oxytocin effects

What Was Tested

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

Oxytocin (OXT) modulates amygdala connectivity and attenuates responses to psychosocial stress, but its effect appears to be moderated by ELS.

Here the researchers first investigate the effect of ELS on amygdala-prefrontal rs-FC, and examine whether ELS-associated changes of rs-FC in this neural circuit predict its response to psychosocial stress.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover 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.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

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

What Was Measured

The researchers measured the rs-FC to bilateral amygdalae and subsequently assessed changes of state anxiety and prefrontal responses to psychosocial stress.

PubMed files the paper under topics including Amygdala, Functional Laterality, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neural Pathways, Oxygen and Oxytocin.

The authors tagged it with the keywords early life stress, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, resting-state functional connectivity and state anxiety.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2014 (Human brain mapping), a journal based in United States.

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