Common and dissociable effects of oxytocin and lorazepam on the neurocircuitry of fear

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Therefore, the rationale of this ultra-high-field functional MRI (fMRI) study was to test OXT against the clinical comparator lorazepam (LZP) with regard to their neuromodulatory effects on local and network responses to fear-related stimuli.

Why It Was Studied

The peptide hormone oxytocin (OXT) exhibits anxiolytic-like properties in animals and humans, but whether OXT and BZDs share similar effects on the neural circuitry of fear is unclear.

One hundred twenty-eight healthy male participants volunteered in this randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-group study.

Who Took Part

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

How the Study Was Run

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

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 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 Amygdala, Fear, Lorazepam, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neurotransmitter Agents and Oxytocin.

The authors tagged it with the keywords benzodiazepines and fMRI.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2020 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America), a journal based in United States.

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