Preliminary evidence that oxytocin does not improve mentalizing in women with schizophrenia

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

The researchers used mixed-effects models and equivalence testing as well as Bayesian hierarchical models to examine oxytocin effects.

Why It Was Studied

Mentalizing, the ability to infer other people's intentions and emotions, is commonly impaired in schizophrenia and may represent an endophenotype.

Given sex differences in the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia and oxytocin system function, this is an important gap to address.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 26 women were involved.

PubMed tags the participants as both men and women.

The researchers aimed to replicate their prior study of oxytocin effects on mentalizing in men with schizophrenia, using the same oxytocin administration procedures and performance-based assessments.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as 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.

Neither the women 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.

Each person switched between Oxytocin and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bayes Theorem, Mentalization, Oxytocin, Schizophrenia and Social Perception.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Sex differences and Social cognition.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 26 women.

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.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2021 (Hormones and behavior), a journal based in United States.

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