Brain areas affected by intranasal oxytocin show higher oxytocin receptor expression.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Habets PC
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9291869 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundBody dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a psychiatric disorder with specific impairments in social cognition related to excessive concerns about one's appearance. Individuals with BDD have difficulty identifying emotional expressions and attribute internal factors for others' emotional expressions in self-referent (but not other-referent) scenarios. Given the role of oxytocin in regulating social approach behavior and social salience, we hypothesized that oxytocin would improve biases in emotion recognition, attributions, and threat interpretations in individuals with BDD, compared to healthy controls (HCs). This is the first study to examine the effects of oxytocin in people with BDD.MethodsEighteen participants with BDD and 16 HCs received a single dose of 24 international units of intranasal oxytocin (Syntocinon®) or matching placebo in a randomized, placebo-controlled, within-subject crossover design. Participants completed the Emotion Recognition Task and Interpretation Questionnaire 45 min after administration.ResultsOxytocin, relative to placebo, did not improve emotion recognition accuracy in either self-referent or other-referent contexts for individuals with BDD. However, oxytocin led to greater internal attributions in other-referent contexts for those with BDD compared to HCs. Rather than reducing self-blame, oxytocin led to other-directed blame. Oxytocin did not impact threat interpretations in BDD.ConclusionsOxytocin may only impact specific aspects of higher order social cognition in BDD and may have unwanted effects on emotion attributions. Our results caution its clinical use in BDD.
| S-EPMC6501211 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Oxytocin (OT) is a key modulator of human social cognition, popular in behavioral neuroscience. To adequately design and interpret intranasal OT (IN-OT) research, it is crucial to know for how long it affects human brain function once administered. However, this has been mostly deduced from peripheral body fluids studies, or uncommonly used dosages. We aimed to characterize IN-OT's effects on human brain function using resting-state EEG microstates across a typical experimental session duration. Nineteen healthy males participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject, cross-over design of 24 IU of IN-OT in 12-min windows 15 min-to-1 h 42min after administration. We observed IN-OT effects on all microstates, across the observation span. During eyes-closed, IN-OT increased duration and contribution of A and contribution and occurrence of D, decreased duration and contribution of B and C; and increased transition probability C-to-B and C-to-D. In eyes-open, it increased A-to-C and A-to-D. As microstates A and D have been related to phonological auditory and attentional networks, respectively, we posit IN-OT may tune the brain for reception of external stimuli, particularly of social nature-tentatively supporting current neurocognitive hypotheses of OT. Moreover, we contrast our overall results against a comprehensive literature review of IN-OT time-course effects in the brain, highlighting comparability issues.
| S-EPMC9290557 | biostudies-literature
Project description:A growing body of evidence indicates that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) alters the neural correlates of socioemotional and salience processing. Yet the effects of OT over important large-scale networks involved in these processes, such as the default mode (DM), ventral attention (VA), and cingulo-opercular (CO) networks, remain unknown. Therefore, we conducted a placebo-controlled crossover study with intranasal 24 IU OT in 38 healthy male subjects using a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm to investigate its impact over these three networks candidates. To understand the underlying mechanisms of the neuropeptide, we compared the intranetwork connectivity for each network candidate and also the internetwork connectivity across all networks between both treatment conditions. Based on the relevance of interindividual factors for OT effects, we correlated individual network changes with behavioral performance in a decision-making task and with impulsivity scores. Our results show that OT mainly alters connectivity in the VA, on one side reducing the coupling to regions that typically form the nodes of DM, an introspective and self-referential network, and on the other side increasing the coupling to the edges of the CO, which is involved in salience processing. The results of the internetwork analyses confirmed the specificity of the OT effects. Indeed, we observed significant correlations with the erroneous performance during decision-making but not with the obtained impulsivity scores. Overall, our data support that the modulation of functional connectivity within the VA is a basic mechanism by which OT directs attentional resources from internal to external cues, preparing the brain for context-dependent salience processing.
| S-EPMC5647506 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Oxytocin plays a vital role in social behavior and homeostatic processes, with animal models indicating that oxytocin receptor (OXTR) expression patterns in the brain influence behavior and physiology. However, the developmental trajectory of OXTR gene expression is unclear. By analyzing gene expression data in human post-mortem brain samples, from the prenatal period to late adulthood, we demonstrate distinct patterns of OXTR gene expression in the developing brain, with increasing OXTR expression along the course of the prenatal period culminating in a peak during early childhood. This early life OXTR expression peak pattern appears slightly earlier in a comparative macaque sample, which is consistent with the relative immaturity of the human brain during early life compared to macaques. We also show that a network of genes with strong spatiotemporal couplings with OXTR is enriched in several psychiatric illness and body composition phenotypes. Taken together, these results demonstrate that oxytocin signaling plays an important role in a diverse set of psychological and somatic processes across the lifespan.
| S-EPMC9205980 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Oxytocin may have promise as a treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders. Its therapeutic effect may depend on its ability to enter the brain and bind to the oxytocin receptor. To date, the brain tissue penetrance of intranasal oxytocin has not been demonstrated. In this nonhuman primate study, we administer deuterated oxytocin intranasally and intravenously to rhesus macaques and measure, with mass spectrometry, concentrations of labeled (exogenously administered) and endogenous oxytocin in 12 brain regions two hours after oxytocin administration. Labeled oxytocin is quantified after intranasal (not intravenous) administration in brain regions (orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, brainstem, and thalamus) that lie in the trajectories of the olfactory and trigeminal nerves. These results suggest that intranasal administration bypasses the blood-brain barrier, delivering oxytocin to specific brain regions, such as the striatum, where oxytocin acts to impact motivated behaviors. Further, high concentrations of endogenous oxytocin are in regions that overlap with projection fields of oxytocinergic neurons.
| S-EPMC7270110 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In primates, resting state functional neuroimaging (rsfcMRI) has identified several large-scale, intrinsic brain networks, including the salience network (SN), which is involved in detecting stimulus salience. Intranasal oxytocin (IN-OT) has been shown to modulate the salience and rewarding quality of social stimuli in mammals and numerous studies have shown that it can affect the functional connectivity between brain regions. Less is known, however, about how these effects unfold over time following IN-OT administration. This study used rsfcMRI in anesthetized rhesus macaques to track temporal changes in the functional connectivity between brain regions involved in the SN, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), anterior insula (AI), amygdala (amy), and ventral striatum (vstr), lasting 3 hr after IN-OT or Placebo (saline) administration. We found significant temporal changes in the functional connectivity between all regions associated with treatment condition. IN-OT increased the functional connectivity between AI_vstr, ACC_amy (right hemisphere), ACC_vstr (left hemisphere), and amy_vstr (right hemisphere), but reduced the functional connectivity between ACC_AI, and the AI_amygdala. These results suggest that IN-OT may dampen salience detection in rhesus monkeys, consistent with previous findings of reduced social vigilance, while enhancing the connectivity between the SN and regions involved in processing reward.
| S-EPMC6381825 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The rice model ORYZA v3 has been recently improved to account for salt stress effect on rice crop growth and yield. This paper details subsequent studies using the improved model to explore opportunities for improving salinity tolerance in rice. The objective was to identify combinations of plant traits influencing rice responses to salinity and to quantify yield gains by improving these traits. The ORYZA v3 model was calibrated and validated with field experimental data collected between 2012 and 2014 in Satkhira, Bangladesh and Infanta, Quezon, Philippines, then used for simulations scenario considering virtual varieties possessing different combinations of crop model parameter values related to crop salinity response and the soil salinity dynamic observed at Satkhira site. Simulation results showed that (i) short duration varieties could escape end of season increase in salinity, while long duration varieties could benefit from an irrigated desalinization period occurring during the later stages of crop growth in the Satkhira situation; (ii) combining short duration growth with salt tolerance (bTR and bPN) above 12?dS?m-1 and a resilience trait (aSalt) of 0.11 in a variety, allows maintenance of 65-70% of rice yield under increasing salinity levels of up to 16?dS?m-1; and (iii) increasing the value of the tolerance parameter b by 1% results in 0.3-0.4% increase in yield. These results are relevant for defining directions to increase rice productivity in saline environments, based on improvements in phenology and quantifiable salt tolerance traits.
| S-EPMC6472128 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Intranasal oxytocin (OT) can modulate social-emotional functioning and related brain activity in humans. Consequently, OT has been discussed as a potential treatment for psychiatric disorders involving social behavioral deficits. However, OT effects are often heterogeneous across individuals. Here we explore individual differences in OT effects on the neural response to social cooperation as a function of the rs53576 polymorphism of the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). Previously, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled study in which healthy men and women were randomized to treatment with intranasal OT or placebo. Afterwards, they were imaged with functional magnetic resonance imaging while playing an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game with same-sex partners. Within the left ventral caudate nucleus, intranasal OT treatment increased activation to reciprocated cooperation in men, but tended to decrease activation in women. Here, we show that these sex differences in OT effects are specific to individuals with the rs53576 GG genotype, and are not found for other genotypes (rs53576 AA/AG). Thus, OT may increase the reward or salience of positive social interactions for male GG homozygotes, while decreasing those processes for female GG homozygotes. These results suggest that rs53576 genotype is an important variable to consider in future investigations of the clinical efficacy of intranasal OT treatment.
| S-EPMC4560652 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The neural mechanisms supporting social bonds between adult men remain uncertain. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled study, we investigate the impact of intranasally administered oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) on behavior and brain activity among men in the context of an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game, which models a real-life social situation. fMRI results show that, relative to both AVP and placebo, OT increases the caudate nucleus response to reciprocated cooperation, which may augment the reward of reciprocated cooperation and/or facilitate learning that another person can be trusted. OT also enhances left amygdala activation in response to reciprocated cooperation. Behaviorally, OT was associated with increased rates of cooperation following unreciprocated cooperation in the previous round compared with AVP. AVP strongly increased cooperation in response to a cooperative gesture by the partner compared with both placebo and OT. In response to reciprocated cooperation, AVP increased activation in a region spanning known vasopressin circuitry implicated in affiliative behaviors in other species. Finally, both OT and AVP increase amygdala functional connectivity with the anterior insula relative to placebo, which may increase the amygdala's ability to elicit visceral somatic markers that guide decision making. These findings extend our knowledge of the neural and behavioral effects of OT and AVP to the context of genuine social interactions.
| S-EPMC3251702 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundOxytocin (OXT) modulates several aspects of social behavior. Intranasal OXT is a leading candidate for treating social deficits in patients with autism spectrum disorder, and common genetic variants in the human OXTR gene are associated with emotion recognition, relationship quality, and autism spectrum disorder. Animal models have revealed that individual differences in Oxtr expression in the brain drive social behavior variation. Our understanding of how genetic variation contributes to brain OXTR expression is very limited.MethodsWe investigated Oxtr expression in monogamous prairie voles, which have a well-characterized OXT system. We quantified brain region-specific levels of Oxtr messenger RNA and oxytocin receptor protein with established neuroanatomic methods. We used pyrosequencing to investigate allelic imbalance of Oxtr mRNA, a molecular signature of polymorphic genetic regulatory elements. We performed next-generation sequencing to discover variants in and near the Oxtr gene. We investigated social attachment using the partner preference test.ResultsOur allelic imbalance data demonstrate that genetic variants contribute to individual differences in Oxtr expression, but only in particular brain regions, including the nucleus accumbens, where oxytocin receptor signaling facilitates social attachment. Next-generation sequencing identified one polymorphism in the Oxtr intron, near a putative cis-regulatory element, explaining 74% of the variance in striatal Oxtr expression specifically. Males homozygous for the high expressing allele display enhanced social attachment.ConclusionsTaken together, these findings provide convincing evidence for robust genetic influence on Oxtr expression and provide novel insights into how noncoding polymorphisms in OXTR might influence individual differences in human social cognition and behavior.
| S-EPMC4909578 | biostudies-literature