Despite a general consensus that oxytocin (OT) has prosocial effects, there is no clear agreement on how these effects are achieved. Human research on OT is reviewed under three broad research initiatives: attachment and trust, social memory, and fear reduction. As an organizing perspective for scholars' current knowledge, a tentative model of the causes and effects of alterations in OT level i...

In humans, oxytocin (OT) enhances prosocial behaviour. However, it is still unclear how the prosocial effects of OT are modulated by emotional features and/or individuals' characteristics. In a placebo-controlled design, we tested 20 healthy male volunteers to investigate these behavioural and neurophysiological modulations using magnetoencephalography. As an index of the individuals' character...

BACKGROUND Oxytocin (OT) is synthesized as a prohormone that is sequentially processed to peptides. These peptides are the bioactive amidated form (OT) and the C-terminal extended peptides, OT-Gly, OT-Gly-Lys and OT-Gly-Lys-Arg, which are designated together as OT-X. As an extension of our previous study finding decreased plasma OT in autism, studies were conducted to determine whether there we...

BACKGROUND Oxytocin (OT), synthesized in the heart, has the ability to heal injured hearts and to promote cardiomyogenesis from stem cells. Recently, we reported that the OT-GKR molecule, a processing intermediate of OT, potently increased the spontaneous formation of cardiomyocytes (CM) in embryonic stem D3 cells and augmented glucose uptake in newborn rat CM above the level stimulated by OT. ...

Oxytocin (OT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) are closely related nine amino acid neuropeptides primarily produced in the hypothalamus and released both in the peripheral and central nervous systems. For over 100 years, OT and AVP have been known for their roles in uterine contraction/milk letdown and blood vessel constriction, respectively. Over the past few decades, the roles of OT and AVP in ...

Individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) present as help-seeking individuals with social deficits well cognitive and functional impairment have a 23–36% of transition to first-episode psychosis. The therapeutic role intranasal oxytocin (ΟΤ) in psychiatric disorders has been widely studied during the last decades, concerning its effects on behavior humans. A literature search was ...

UNLABELLED The major regulator of the neuroendocrine stress response in the brain is corticotropin releasing factor (CRF), whose transcription is controlled by CREB and its cofactors CRTC2/3 (TORC2/3). Phosphorylated CRTCs are sequestered in the cytoplasm, but rapidly dephosphorylated and translocated into the nucleus following a stressful stimulus. As the stress response is attenuated by oxyto...

The oxytocin (OT) family of neuropeptides are known to modulate social behaviours and anxiety in mammals and birds. We investigated cell numbers and neural activity, assessed as Fos induction, within magnocellular and parvocellular populations of neurons producing the OT homologue mesotocin (MT, Ile(8)-oxytocin). This was conducted within the male brown anole lizard, Anolis sagrei, following ag...

Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences This paper discusses recent neuroeconomic evidence related to other-regarding behaviors and the decision to trust in other people’s other-regarding behavior. This evidence supports the view that people derive nonpecuniary utility (i) from mutual cooperation in social dilemma (SD) games and (ii) from punishing unfair behavior. Thus, mutua...

Oxytocin (OT) is a pituitary hormone and acts on the oxytocin receptor which are expressed in the brain, heart, kidney and blood vessels. OT has been implicated in its role in social bonding, and oxytocin's role in the parasympathetic nervous system includes the control of memory and learning processes and of various types of behaviour such as feeding, locomotion, as well as maternal and sexual...