Brain Dynamics of Oxytocin

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2015-05-01
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that is well known for its role in social and affiliative behavior in humans. Oxytocin receptors are significantly lowered in autistic individuals and administration of oxytocin has shown benefits in enhancing social recognition and behavior in autistic children. However, more recent research has refined the behavioral effects of oxytocin, moving away from the notion that the neuropeptide blindly induces love and trust, towards the view that it actually increases social perception in assessing friend vs. foe: supporting cohesion with 'insiders' and distrust and aggression for 'outsiders.' Oxytocin is responsible for the selective aggression shown by lactating female mammals protecting their young, an effect demonstrated also in humans, and has been shown to strengthen feelings of ethnocentrism. However, no neuroimaging study to date has investigated this effect, with the consequence that its neurobiological basis is still unknown.

The general aim of our study is to determine meso-circuit brain dynamics that underlie oxytocin's amplification of both trust and aggression; and specifically, using neuroimaging (fMRI, magnetoencephalography, and behavioral testing) whether oxytocin amplifies kinship bias by attenuating social reward learning.

• Phase: Phase 1
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Stony Brook University
• Collaborator: Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
• Treatments: Oxytocin

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• 18-45 years of age

Exclusion Criteria:

• any significant known medical condition, including mental disorders (confounds interpretation of brain activity)

• metal in the body or claustrophobia (contraindicated for fMRI)

• current use of any type of psychotropic medication (confounds interpretation of brain activity)

• body mass index of greater than 30 (to permit matched dosing across subjects)

• pregnancy (contraindicated for OT)

• breastfeeding (lactation endogenously triggers OT, which would not permit a placebo condition)

• smoking (affects use of nasal spray)

• use of drugs of abuse (confounds interpretation of brain activity)

• blood pressure above the normal range (140/90 mm Hg) or controlled with medication (may theoretically increase risk for OT side-effects)

• anosmia (affects use of nasal spray)