Simpson Elizabeth A, Paukner Annika, Sclafani Valentina, Kaburu Stefano S K, Suomi Stephen J, Ferrari Pier F
Department of Psychology, University of Miami, 5665 Ponce De Leon Boulevard, Coral Gables, FL, 33124, USA.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, Poolesville, MD, USA.
Psychopharmacology (Berl). 2017 Feb;234(3):497-506. doi: 10.1007/s00213-016-4480-x. Epub 2016 Nov 11.
Exogenous oxytocin administration is widely reported to improve social cognition in human and nonhuman primate adults. Risk factors of impaired social cognition, however, emerge in infancy. Early interventions-when plasticity is greatest-are critical to reverse negative outcomes.
We tested the hypothesis that oxytocin may exert similar positive effects on infant social cognition, as in adults. To test this idea, we assessed the effectiveness of acute, aerosolized oxytocin on two foundational social cognitive skills: working memory (i.e., ability to briefly hold and process information) and social gaze (i.e., tracking the direction of others' gaze) in 1-month-old nursery-reared macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta). We did not predict sex differences, but we included sex as a factor in our analyses to test whether our effects would be generalizable across both males and females.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled design, we found that females were more socially skilled at baseline compared to males, and that oxytocin improved working memory and gaze following, but only in males.
These sex differences, while unexpected, may be due to interactions with gonadal steroids and may be relevant to sexually dimorphic disorders of social cognition, such as male-biased autism spectrum disorder, for which oxytocin has been proposed as a potential treatment. In sum, we report the first evidence that oxytocin may influence primate infant cognitive abilities. Moreover, these behavioral effects appear sexually dimorphic, highlighting the importance of considering sex differences. Oxytocin effects observed in one sex may not be generalizable to the other sex.
外源性催产素给药被广泛报道可改善人类和非人类灵长类成年动物的社会认知。然而，社会认知受损的风险因素在婴儿期就已出现。早期干预——在可塑性最强的时候——对于扭转负面结果至关重要。
我们检验了催产素可能对婴儿社会认知产生与对成年动物类似的积极影响这一假设。为了验证这一想法，我们评估了急性雾化催产素对两项基本社会认知技能的有效性：工作记忆（即短暂持有和处理信息的能力）和社会注视（即追踪他人注视方向），对象是1月龄在保育室饲养的猕猴（恒河猴）。我们没有预测性别差异，但在分析中纳入了性别因素，以检验我们的结果是否适用于雄性和雌性。
在双盲、安慰剂对照设计中，我们发现雌性在基线时的社交技能比雄性更强，并且催产素改善了工作记忆和注视跟随能力，但仅在雄性中有效。
这些性别差异虽然出乎意料，但可能是由于与性腺类固醇的相互作用，并且可能与社会认知的性二态性障碍有关，例如男性偏向的自闭症谱系障碍，催产素已被提议作为一种潜在治疗方法。总之，我们报告了首个证据表明催产素可能影响灵长类婴儿的认知能力。此外，这些行为效应呈现出性二态性，凸显了考虑性别差异的重要性。在一种性别中观察到的催产素效应可能不适用于另一种性别。
