Neural substrates underlying the effects of oxytocin: a quantitative meta-analysis of pharmaco-imaging studies

Abstract

The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OT) is crucial in social adaptation and used to treat emotional and social deficits. Here, we conducted a systematic, quantitative meta-analysis of functional-MRI studies intranasally administering OT (IN-OT) to uncover neural substrates underlying the IN-OT effects and to elucidate differential IN-OT effects between healthy and clinical populations. Meta-analyses were conducted on 66 IN-OT fMRI studies, stratified by psychopathology, valence and sex. IN-OT increased bilateral amygdala, caudate head, and superior temporal activity in healthy individuals and increased dorsal anterior cingulate activity in patients. Moreover, IN-OT decreased amygdala activity in both patients and healthy individuals but did so to a greater degree in patients than healthy individuals. The OT-increased amygdala activity was only found on the negative social and affective processes, whereas the OT-decreased amygdala activity was mainly contributed by contrasts on negative-valenced processes. IN-OT increased parahippocampal activity and decreased amygdala activity during negative socio-affective processing. During positive socio-affective processes, IN-OT increased caudate head activity. This study indicates convergent neural substrates and the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms for IN-OT effects on social and affective processes. The common and different effects of IN-OT on patients and healthy individuals and the modulation of OT effects by valence have critical implications.

Effects of oxytocin administration and conditioned oxytocin on brain activity: An fMRI study

“…However, the direction of this oxytocin effect does not correspond to most previous studies. Several previous studies showed enhanced STG activity in response to emotional and social stimuli after oxytocin administration [26,42]. However, in our study we found that participants in the oxytocin group had lower activation in the STG on the contrast fear > neutral in comparison to the placebo group.…”

Oxytocin modulates the intrinsic dynamics between attention-related large scale networks

“…In line with this conceptual framework, a growing number of recent studies have reported modulatory effects of OXT on the intrinsic functional interplay between widely distributed brain regions across species (e.g. Bethlehem et al, 2017;Eckstein et al, 2017;Rubin et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2017).…”

Mother Brain is Wired for Social Moments

“…Intranasal oxytocin administration targets social moments by increasing the prototypical social behaviors in parent and child and elevating their coordination (Naber et al, 2010;Weisman et al, 2012a), and it is therefore hypothesized that OT effects would be specific to the social context. However, the literature is mixed on whether OT administration may increase or attenuate these socially-driven neural activations (Chen et al, 2017;Grace et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2017;Wigton et al, 2015). Indeed, while some studies show increased activation of limbic, paralimbic, and temporal structures to oxytocin administration, consistent with the "social salience" hypothesis of oxytocin (Shamay-Tsoory and Abu-Akel, 2016), others demonstrated attenuation of these same regions to OT administration, consistent with the anxyolitic model on OT (Neumann and Slattery, 2016).…”