Heinrichs Markus, Meinlschmidt Gunther, Wippich Werner, Ehlert Ulrike, Hellhammer Dirk H
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Zürich, Zürichbergstrasse 43, CH-8044 Zürich, Switzerland.
Physiol Behav. 2004 Oct 30;83(1):31-8. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2004.07.020.
The neuropeptide oxytocin is essential for mammalian parturition and lactation. Recent animal studies suggest that oxytocin is also implicated in the central nervous control of behavior including learning and memory. There has been little investigation, however, of the impact of oxytocin on human memory. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on implicit and explicit memory in humans. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind study, 38 healthy men were randomly assigned to receive intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) or placebo 50 min before the study phase (incidental learning). Memory was measured using three different memory tests: an implicit perceptual test (word stem completion), an implicit conceptual test (category-cued semantic association), and an explicit test (cued recall). Due to the reproductive-biological role of oxytocin and the impact of adequate environmental conditions for the stimulation of behavioral effects of oxytocin known from animal research, we used semantic word stimuli with reproduction-related vs. neutral meaning. Oxytocin significantly impaired recall performance as compared with placebo treatment irrespective of the meaning of words in the cued recall test. In the implicit conceptual test, characterized by a deepened information processing, compared with placebo, oxytocin significantly impaired only the overall generation of associated target words with reproduction relevant meaning, whereas no significant difference between oxytocin and placebo was obtained for neutral words. These findings concur with data from animal research suggesting that central oxytocin selectively influences memory performance depending on the kind of memory test used and, more importantly, the psychobiological relevance of stimuli.
神经肽催产素对哺乳动物的分娩和哺乳至关重要。最近的动物研究表明，催产素还参与包括学习和记忆在内的行为的中枢神经控制。然而，催产素对人类记忆的影响鲜有研究。本研究的目的是调查单剂量鼻内催产素对人类内隐记忆和外显记忆的影响。在一项安慰剂对照、双盲研究中，38名健康男性在研究阶段（附带学习）前50分钟被随机分配接受鼻内催产素（24国际单位）或安慰剂。使用三种不同的记忆测试来测量记忆：一种内隐知觉测试（词干补全）、一种内隐概念测试（类别提示语义联想）和一种外显测试（线索回忆）。由于催产素的生殖生物学作用以及动物研究中已知的充足环境条件对催产素行为效应刺激的影响，我们使用了具有生殖相关意义与中性意义的语义词刺激。与安慰剂治疗相比，无论线索回忆测试中单词的意义如何，催产素均显著损害回忆表现。在以深化信息处理为特征的内隐概念测试中，与安慰剂相比，催产素仅显著损害了具有生殖相关意义的相关目标词的总体生成，而对于中性词，催产素与安慰剂之间未获得显著差异。这些发现与动物研究数据一致，表明中枢催产素根据所使用的记忆测试类型，更重要的是根据刺激的心理生物学相关性，选择性地影响记忆表现。
