Oxytocin Improves Brain Function in Autistic Children: Yale Study

Oxytocin can help autistic children process social cues, a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers suggests.

The study found that a single dose of the so-called 'love hormone' can increase activity in brain regions associated with social bonding in people suffering from autism.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges. Research has shown that both genes and the environment raise autism risk.

The idea that oxytocin helps improve symptoms of autism gained momentum last year when Yale University published a preliminary study saying that oxytocin could help people with ASD.

The present study was a double-blind controlled test on 17 children and teens with autism. Participants were either given a dose of oxytocin or a placebo during a task that required social skills.

"We found that brain centers associated with reward and emotion recognition responded more during social tasks when children received oxytocin instead of the placebo," Ilanit Gordon, a Yale Child Study Center postdoctoral fellow and first author of the study, said in a news release. "Oxytocin temporarily normalized brain regions responsible for the social deficits seen in children with autism."

According to researchers, the hormone could get the brain to pay more attention to social stimuli such as faces instead of non-social ones such as cars or buildings. Recently, a study published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, had found that children with autism have a poor reward response system, meaning that they don't get excited when they see new images of people or things.

The present study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), In the US, 1 in 88 children and 1 in every 54 boys are born with autism.

In May, 2013, The National Institutes of Health announced grant award of $100 million over five years to 11 centers nationwide. The projects include testing whether an oxytocin nasal spray could help autistic children. However, researchers from the University of New South Wales proved that the sprays don't help much.