Attenuated relationship between salivary oxytocin levels and attention to social information in adolescents and adults with autism spectrum disorder: a comparative study

Abstract

Background: Previous research studies have assessed the relationship between attention to social information and peripheral (e.g., plasma and salivary) oxytocin (OT) levels in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A relationship between them was observed in TD children, but not in children with ASD. However, this relationship remains unexamined in other age groups. To clarify whether this lack of association is maintained throughout development in individuals with ASD, we aimed to assess the relationship between salivary OT levels and attention to social information in adolescents and adults with and without ASD. Methods: We recruited male adolescents and adults with ASD (n = 17) and TD participants (n = 24). Using the all-inone eye-tracking system Gazefinder, we measured the percentage fixation time allocated to social information. We also measured the salivary OT levels and Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) of participants. Subsequently, we confirmed group differences and conducted a correlation analysis to investigate the relationships between these three measures. Results: Salivary OT levels did not show any significant difference between the ASD and TD groups and were negatively correlated with the AQ in the whole-group analysis, but not in within-group analysis. Individuals with ASD had significantly lower percentage fixation times than did TD individuals for eye regions in human faces with/ without mouth motion, for upright biological motion, and for people regions in the people and geometry movies. The percentage of fixation for geometric shapes in the people and geometry movies was significantly higher in the ASD than in the TD group. In the TD group, salivary OT levels were positively correlated with percentage fixation times for upright biological motion and people and negatively correlated with inverted biological motion and geometry. However, no significant correlations were found in the ASD group. Conclusions: Our exploratory results suggest that salivary OT levels in adolescents and adults with ASD are less indicative of attention to social stimuli than they are in TD adolescents and adults. It is suggested that their association

Endogenous Oxytocin Levels in Autism—A Meta-Analysis

“…Three investigated groups of adults [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Pertaining to sex, eight studies reported on exclusively male populations [ 4 , 5 , 7 , 8 , 32 , 35 , 37 , 38 ] and one study adopted an exclusively female sample [ 32 ]. For the studies involving a mixed population, four studies reported separate outcomes of OT level measurement for male and female subgroups and were entered accordingly in the subgroup analyses [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”

Diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorder Without Expertise: A Pilot Study of 5- to 17-Year-Old Individuals Using Gazefinder

“…Gazefinder, a system in which a set of devices to capture eye gaze patterns and stimulating movie clips are equipped in a personal computer (PC) with a 19-inch monitor (1280 × 1024 pixels), manufactured by JVC Kenwood Co. Ltd. (Yokohama, Japan), was chosen to measure eye gaze patterns. The technical features of this system have been described in previous studies ( 18 , 19 , 27 , 28 ). In brief, corneal reflection techniques enable the device to calculate eye gaze positions on the PC monitor as (X, Y) coordinates in pixel units, at a frequency of 50 Hz (i.e., 3,000 eye gaze positions detected per minute).…”

Oxytocin-induced increase in N,N-dimethylglycine and time course of changes in oxytocin efficacy for autism social core symptoms

“…ADOS is a standard diagnosis tool for ASD but recently has been increasingly adopted as a primary outcome in ASD-related trials [ 24 , 27 , 31 – 35 ]. (ii) Gaze fixation time on socially relevant regions = changes in the percentage of gaze fixation time on the eye region of a talking face presented on a video monitor, between baseline and 6-week endpoint (endpoint − baseline), which were measured with Gazefinder, a validated all-in-one eye-tracking system, for a few minutes subsequent to the ADOS sessions using the standardized and validated method described details in elsewhere [ 18 , 24 , 36 , 37 ](JVC KENWOOD Corporation, Yokohama, Japan). (iii, iv, v, and vi) log-PDF mode of quantified facial expression production of a neutral face during 0–6, 0–2, 2–4, and 4–6 weeks = changes in the natural logarithm of the mode of the probability density function of neutral facial expression intensity during a semistructured situation conducted during a few minutes of social interaction in the “ Cartoons ” activity in ADOS module 4.…”