Washington: A new study has revealed that a single dose of the hormone oxytocin, delivered via nasal spray, can enhance brain activity while processing social information in kids suffering from autism spectrum disorders.
First author Ilanit Gordon from Yale School of Medicine along with other researchers conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 17 children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders.
The participants, between the ages of 8 and 16.5, were randomly given either oxytocin spray or a placebo nasal spray during a task involving social judgments. Oxytocin is naturally occurring hormone produced in the brain and throughout the body.
"We found that brain centres associated with reward and emotion recognition responded more during social tasks when children received oxytocin instead of the placebo. Oxytocin temporarily normalized brain regions responsible for the social deficits seen in children with autism," Gordon said.
Gordon said oxytocin facilitated social attunement, a process that makes the brain regions involved in social behaviour and social cognition activate more for social stimuli (such as faces) and activate less for non-social stimuli (such as cars).
The study has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
