In Oxytocin We Trust

This report focuses only on the 83 males who took part in the study... Growing evidence suggests that the effects of oxytocin are different for males and females (Feng et al., 2015) and most of the current evidence on intranasal oxytocin’s psychological effects, which support the current hypotheses, come from studies with exclusively male samples. A separate analysis of female participants, controlling for a series of additional variables related to natural variations in oxytocin is ongoing.The larger study also included a task using Chinese pictographs, since the ability to read Chinese pictographs was an exclusionary criterion “applied to another task unrelated to the current investigation.” I'm generally not a study pre-registration evangelist, but one can really see the point here.In Oxytocin We DoubtI'll conclude on a pessimistic note (what else is new?). Some highly critical reviews of the oxytocin literature have appeared recently.Evans SL, Dal Monte O, Noble P, Averbeck BB. Intranasal oxytocin effects on social cognition: a critique. Brain Res. 2014 Sep 11;1580:69-77.Leng G, Ludwig M. Intranasal Oxytocin: Myths and Delusions. Biol Psychiatry. 2016 Feb 1;79(3):243-50.Despite widespread reports that intranasal application of oxytocin has a variety of behavioral effects, very little of the huge amounts applied intranasally appears to reach the cerebrospinal fluid. However, peripheral concentrations are increased to supraphysiologic levels, with likely effects o...

Source: The Neurocritic - June 22, 2016 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs