Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Feb 17:8:48.
doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2014.00048. eCollection 2014.

The oxytocin paradox

Richard A I Bethlehem  1 , Simon Baron-Cohen  2 , Jack van Honk  3 , Bonnie Auyeung  4 , Peter A Bos  3
Affiliations

The oxytocin paradox

Richard A I Bethlehem et al. Front Behav Neurosci. .
No abstract available

Keywords: anxiety; autism spectrum disorder; oxytocin; reward; reward processing; translational research.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Oxytocin reduces anxiety and stress for social interaction and increases social reward sensitivity. With respect to the latter, OXT likely affects hedonistic reward processing (e.g., “liking”) via its interaction with the opioid system and incentive reward processing (e.g., “wanting”) via a striatal-dopamine pathway (Berridge et al., 2009). Which pathway is affected likely depends on the specific context. Both reduced anxiety and increased reward sensitivity might increase sensitivity for social salience but also directly improve aspects of social cognition depending on person and context. Furthermore the subsequent contextual or environmental feedback affects the sensitivity and plasticity of the OXT system depending on its valence (e.g., positive or negative feedback). Positive feedback after OXT administration, such as pleasant social interaction, might reinforce the sensitivity for social reward and further decrease anxiety. This feedback potentially also alters the plasticity of the OXT system. For example, more OXT may be released during social interaction. Another potential scenario is that OXT administration leads to decreased anxiety, which in turn leads to heightened social salience. Which may also involve paying more attention to (potentially) negative social cues. Administration of OXT might therefore have a stronger impact on this negative feedback in neurotypical individuals, as was shown by Striepens et al. (2012). Lastly, any type of feedback resulting from altered social reward processing is likely to affect reward learning.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Andari E., Duhamel J. R., Zalla T., Herbrecht E., Leboyer M., Sirigu A. (2010). Promoting social behavior with oxytocin in high-functioning autism spectrum disorders. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 107, 4389–4394 10.1073/pnas.0910249107 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bale T. L., Davis A. M., Auger A. P., Dorsa D. M., Mccarthy M. M. (2001). CNS region-specific oxytocin receptor expression: importance in regulation of anxiety and sex behavior. J. Neurosci. 21, 2546–2552 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Baracz S. J., Cornish J. L. (2013). Oxytocin modulates dopamine-mediated reward in the rat subthalamic nucleus. Horm. Behav. 63, 370–375 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.12.003 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bartz J. A., Zaki J., Bolger N., Hollander E., Ludwig N. N., Kolevzon A., et al. (2010). Oxytocin selectively improves empathic accuracy. Psychol. Sci. 21, 1426–1428 10.1177/0956797610383439 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bartz J. A., Zaki J., Bolger N., Ochsner K. N. (2011). Social effects of oxytocin in humans: context and person matter. Trends Cogn. Sci. 15, 301–309 10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.002 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources