Oxytocin: A citation network analysis of 10 000 papers

Abstract

In 2002, Gainer et al 1 described the hypothalamic-neurohypophysial system, comprising the neurones that secrete oxytocin and vasopressin from the posterior pituitary, as "a veritable 'Rosetta Stone' for neuroendocrinology and neuroscience". Amongst the "many seminal findings" that came from this system, they highlighted the discovery and characterisation of neuropeptides, 2 the development of peptide agonists and antagonists, 3 the proposal of the prohormone concept, 4 the characterisation of bursting pacemaker activity in central nervous system neurones, 5 and the demonstrations of neuropeptide secretion from dendrites, 6 of glial-neuronal plasticity 7 and that peptides can produce complex behaviours. 8 We felt prompted to ask whether this system might also be valuable for understanding how scientific understanding develops. We sought to trace how knowledge about oxytocin has changed and is changing, and how that understanding varies in the works of different scientists pursuing different research objectives. To do this, we use a systematic search to capture a large part of the oxytocin literature, and we use citation network analysis to identify its structure, clustering papers according to their citation links.We begin with a brief account of the beginning of the oxytocin field. We then analyse each cluster to identify its topic focus, and show how the field has evolved since 1950, using bibliometric data to identify highly-cited papers. We do not assume that high citation counts define the best papers, but only that they indicate the changing foci of scientific activity. By this, we sketch out an outline of a history of oxytocin research -of the different perspectives of what oxytocin is and does, and what some might hope it might do. Our aim is to provide a sense of the diverse research questions, ideas, and findings that have motivated, and continue to motivate, research on oxytocin. And, by examining the publication and citation dynamics of this field over the last 70 years, we hope to help the reader to better understand the publication and citation metrics that continue to pervade and distort academia. 9 | ME THODSOxytocin was the first peptide hormone whose sequence was established, and the first to be synthesised; its gene was amongst the first mammalian genes to be sequenced, 10 and it has been a

Oxytocin—a social peptide? Deconstructing the evidence

“…To do so, we used the Leiden algorithm [ 45 ], which recognized seven clusters by the density of citation links between papers. We visualized the network via the ForceAtlas 2 algorithm [ 46 ] that clusters densely interconnected nodes together (see [ 30 ] for a full description of the methods). In the following account, ‘indegree’ refers to how often a paper appears in the reference lists of other papers in the network; a high indegree thus indicates that a paper has been an influential source of evidence for other primary studies of oxytocin and social behaviour.…”

“…The conclusion that oxytocin was involved in affiliative bonds prompted the suggestion that it might generally promote social interactions, and in 2005, a paper in Nature reported that intranasal oxytocin could promote interpersonal trust in humans [ 29 ]. This was to become the highest cited paper ever published on oxytocin [ 30 ], and it was followed by several other papers that made similarly bold claims, including that oxytocin can enhance the ability to infer mental states and emotions from facial cues [ 31 ], and that it increases generosity [ 32 ]. More papers followed in high-impact journals, strengthening the perception that this was a high-impact field, with potential utility in treating conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.…”

“…Here, we mapped the literature relevant to this claim, in a style that we previously used to reconstruct the history of oxytocin research [ 30 ]. We searched the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection for journal articles in English that contain ‘oxytocin’ OR ‘pitocin’ OR ‘syntocinon’ in the title, and searched within that set for articles with ‘social’, ‘prosocial’ or ‘antisocial’ as a topic, meaning that one of these terms appeared in the abstract or among the keywords.…”

A guide for calculating study-level statistical power for meta-analyses

“…These meta-analyses synthesize data evaluating the effect of intranasal oxytocin administration on various behavioral and cognitive outcomes, with positive values indicative of intranasal oxytocin improving outcome measures. Oxytocin is a hormone and neuromodulator produced in the brain, which been the subject of considerable research in the psychological sciences interest due to its therapeutic potential for addressing social impairments (Jurek & Neumann, 2018;Leng & Leng, 2021;Quintana & Guastella, 2020). However, this field of research has been associated with mixed results (Alvares et al, 2017), which has partly been attributed…”

Oxytocin does not stand alone

“…The neuropeptide oxytocin persists as a hot topic in neuroscience, with steadily increasing interest in both scientific literature [1] and popular culture during recent decades [2][3][4][5]. This attention is inspired not only by the fascinating workings of oxytocin itself, which span in breadth from underlying critical reproductive biology [6] to supporting high-level social behaviours [7][8][9], but also by the enormous potential of leveraging oxytocin as a therapeutic to enhance social cognition [10][11][12][13].…”