Oxytocin promotes face-sensitive neural responses to infant and adult faces in mothers

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this clinical study publication.

In the current study, the researchers recorded cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether intranasal OT affects the early neural responses to emotional faces in mothers of 1-year-old infants.

Why It Was Studied

Given the pivotal role of OT in parental behaviors across mammals, the paucity of intranasal OT research investigating responses to social cues in parents and particularly mothers of young children is a critical limitation.

The researchers hypothesized that ERP responses to faces would be larger in the OT condition and that the effects of OT on ERP responses would be more pronounced for infant faces.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, women only.

Using a double-blind, within-subjects design, mothers (n = 38) were administered intranasal OT and placebo on separate sessions and presented with happy and sad infant and adult faces while ERP components reflecting face-sensitive brain activation and attention allocation were measured.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Attention, Brain, Cues, Electroencephalography, Emotions, Evoked Potentials and Facial Expression.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Event-related potentials, Facial expressions, Infants, Mothers and Oxytocin.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2018 (Psychoneuroendocrinology), a journal based in England.

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