Hollander Eric, Bartz Jennifer, Chaplin William, Phillips Ann, Sumner Jennifer, Soorya Latha, Anagnostou Evdokia, Wasserman Stacey
Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2007 Feb 15;61(4):498-503. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.05.030. Epub 2006 Aug 14.
Oxytocin dysfunction might contribute to the development of social deficits in autism, a core symptom domain and potential target for intervention. This study explored the effect of intravenous oxytocin administration on the retention of social information in autism.
Oxytocin and placebo challenges were administered to 15 adult subjects diagnosed with autism or Asperger's disorder, and comprehension of affective speech (happy, indifferent, angry, and sad) in neutral content sentences was tested.
All subjects showed improvements in affective speech comprehension from pre- to post-infusion; however, whereas those who received placebo first tended to revert to baseline after a delay, those who received oxytocin first retained the ability to accurately assign emotional significance to speech intonation on the speech comprehension task.
These results are consistent with studies linking oxytocin to social recognition in rodents as well as studies linking oxytocin to prosocial behavior in humans and suggest that oxytocin might facilitate social information processing in those with autism. These findings also provide preliminary support for the use of oxytocin in the treatment of autism.
催产素功能障碍可能导致自闭症社交缺陷的出现，社交缺陷是自闭症的一个核心症状领域，也是潜在的干预靶点。本研究探讨了静脉注射催产素对自闭症患者社交信息记忆的影响。
对15名被诊断为自闭症或阿斯伯格综合征的成年受试者进行催产素和安慰剂激发试验，并测试他们对中性内容句子中情感性言语（高兴、冷漠、愤怒和悲伤）的理解。
所有受试者在输注前后情感性言语理解能力均有提高；然而，先接受安慰剂的受试者在延迟后往往会恢复到基线水平，而先接受催产素的受试者在言语理解任务中仍能准确地赋予言语语调情感意义。
这些结果与将催产素与啮齿动物社交识别联系起来的研究以及将催产素与人类亲社会行为联系起来的研究一致，表明催产素可能促进自闭症患者的社交信息处理。这些发现也为催产素用于治疗自闭症提供了初步支持。
