Intranasal oxytocin increases neural responses to social reward in post-traumatic stress disorder

What Was Tested

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

As a first step to investigate this therapeutical potential, the researchers investigated whether intranasal oxytocin enhances neural sensitivity to social reward in PTSD patients.

Why It Was Studied

Therapeutic alliance and perceived social support are important predictors of treatment response for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

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

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.

Male and female police officers with (n = 35) and without PTSD (n = 37) were included in a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled cross-over fMRI study.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Cerebral Cortex, Dominance, Cerebral, Facial Recognition, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Motivation, Oxytocin and Police.

Author keywords: PTSD, insula, medication-enhanced psychotherapy (MEP), reward and social.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2017 (Social cognitive and affective neuroscience), a journal based in England.

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