Oxytocin enhances orienting to social information in a selective group of high-functioning male adults with autism spectrum disorder

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The study investigated the effects of nasally administered oxytocin on neurophysiological orienting to empathy-evoking pictures in normally intelligent male adults with and without an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

It further investigated whether these effects might be moderated by the individual's approach and avoidance tendencies.

Who Took Part

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

All subjects participated in a randomised double-blind placebo controlled crossover trial where either oxytocin (OXT) or placebo was administered preceding the viewing of affective pictures.The pictures, selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), represented a systematic variation of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral scenes with and without humans.

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.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Oxytocin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

Each person switched between Oxytocin and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

Both cardiac (ECR) and cortical (LPP) evoked orienting responses were measured and both were enhanced for the pictures with humans, in particular for the unpleasant ones.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Analysis of Variance, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Brain Mapping, Electrocardiography, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials and Intelligence Tests.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Affective empathy, Effect moderators, Neurophysiological orienting and Oxytocin.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

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 2015 (Neuropsychologia), a journal based in England.

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