Oxytocin improves behavioural and neural deficits in inferring others' social emotions in autism

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Here, the researchers sequentially conducted both a case-control study and a clinical trial to investigate the potential effects of oxytocin on this difficulty at behavioural and neural levels measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a psychological task.

Why It Was Studied

Although difficulty in understanding of others' social emotions and beliefs under conditions without direct emotional cues also plays an important role in autism spectrum disorder, no study has examined the potential effect of oxytocin on this difficulty.

This task was modified from the Sally-Anne Task, a well-known first-order false belief task.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults and adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was 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.

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

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

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Case-Control Studies, Cerebral Cortex, Child Development Disorders, Pervasive, Emotions, Empathy, Facial Expression and Functional Neuroimaging.

Author keywords: mentalizing, neuropeptide, perspective taking and theory of mind.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2014 (Brain : a journal of neurology), a journal based in England.

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