Intranasal oxytocin does not modulate jumping to conclusions in schizophrenia: Potential interactions with caudate volume and baseline social functioning

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

The researchers also explored whether striatal volume, clinical symptoms, and baseline social functioning (SF) was related to JTC performance.

Who Took Part

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

Forty-three male, medicated SCZ patients (Mean Age: 40.81±11.44) and sixteen HCs (Mean Age: 30.38±9.85) participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study.

Participants completed the Beads Task on two separate visits (minimum 20days apart).

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.

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.

Twenty of the SCZ patients and all sixteen HCs also provided T1 MRIs (3-T).

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Caudate Nucleus, Decision Making, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuroimaging, Oxytocin, Schizophrenia and Schizophrenic Psychology.

Author keywords: Beads task, Jumping to conclusions, Morphometry, Social cognition and Volume.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 8 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Psychoneuroendocrinology), a journal based in England.

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