Victory is its own reward: oxytocin increases costly competitive behavior in schizophrenia

What Was Tested

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

The researchers used a competitive economic game and computational modeling to examine behavioral dynamics and oxytocin effects on sensitivity to social reward among 39 men with schizophrenia and 54 matched healthy controls.

Why It Was Studied

Aberrant sensitivity to social reward may be an important contributor to abnormal social behavior that is a core feature of schizophrenia.

The neuropeptide oxytocin impacts the salience of social information across species, but its effect on social reward in schizophrenia is unknown.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 39 men were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, men only.

The researchers analyzed bidding behavior using multilevel linear mixed models and reinforcement learning models.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled 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.

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

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

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Competitive Behavior, Decision Making, Motivation, Oxytocin, Reinforcement, Social, Reward and Schizophrenia.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Auctions, computational modeling, decision-making, psychosis and reinforcement learning.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 39 men.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2020 (Psychological medicine), a journal based in England.

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