When too much of a good thing is bad: Chronic oxytocin, development, and social impairments

摘要

There has been a growing fascination with the role of oxytocin (OT) in the regulation of social cognition and interpersonal relationships (1). This interest originated from animal studies showing that OT is involved in the initiation of maternal nurturing and the mother-infant bond (2). More recent research suggests that OT is not simply a nurturing and bonding molecule but functions more generally to modulate the salience and reinforcing nature of social stimuli. Mice lacking OT cannot discriminate a familiar from a novel mouse through the typical olfactory processing, a deficit that is rescued by a single injection of OT into the amygdala minutes before the encounter (3). In monogamous prairie voles, OT facilitates the formation of pair bonds by linking the social cues of the partner with the reward of mating.