Intranasal oxytocin effects on social cognition: A critique
Open accessAbstract
The last decade has seen a large number of published findings supporting the hypothesis that intranasally delivered oxytocin (OT) can enhance the processing of social stimuli and regulate social emotion-related behaviors such as trust, memory, fidelity, and anxiety. The use of nasal spray for administering OT in behavioral research has become a standard method, but many questions still exist regarding its action. OT is a peptide that cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, and it has yet to be shown that it does indeed reach the brain when delivered intranasally. Given the evidence, it seems highly likely that OT does affect behavior when delivered as a nasal spray. These effects may be driven by at least three possible mechanisms. First, the intranasally delivered OT may diffuse directly into the CNS where it directly engages OT receptors. Second, the intranasally delivered OT may trigger increased central release via an indirect peripheral mechanism. And third, the indirect peripheral effects may directly lead to behavioral effects via some mechanism other than increased central release. Although intranasally delivered OT likely affects behavior, there are conflicting reports as to the exact nature of those behavioral changes: some studies suggest that OT effects are not always "pro-social" and others suggest effects on social behaviors are due to a more general anxiolytic effect. In this critique, we draw from work in healthy human populations and the animal literature to review the mechanistic aspects of intranasal OT delivery, and to discuss intranasal OT effects on social cognition and behavior. We conclude that future work should control carefully for anxiolytic and gender effects, which could underlie inconsistencies in the existing literature. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Oxytocin and Social Behav.
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Oxytocin has a role in regulating complex social behavior, including parental care, social bonding and social cognition in general.
“More recently, attention has turned to its role in regulating complex social behavior, including parental care, social bonding and social cognition in general (1–6).”
From Statistical and Methodological Considerations for the Interpretation of Intranasal Oxytocin Studies (2016) · cites this paper as [3]
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Statistical and Methodological Considerations for the Interpretation of Intranasal Oxytocin Studies
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- Authors
- Evans, S. L., Dal Monte, O., Noble, P., & Averbeck, B. B.
- Affiliations
- University of Sussex (GB)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Venue
- Brain Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-09
- Volume
- 1580
- Pages
- 69-77
- ISSN
- 0006-8993 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4021009
- OpenAlex
- W1999143702
- Cited by
- 97
- References
- 106
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 3
- FWCI
- 1.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Brain Research (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Surrey Research Insight Open Access (The University of Surrey) (submittedVersion)
- Institutional Research Information System University of Turin (University of Turin) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (ZIAMH002928)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Sensory Systems › Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neuropeptides and Animal Physiology
- Keywords
- intranasal oxytocin, social cognition, oxytocin receptor, blood-brain barrier, anxiolytic effects, gender differences, social behavior, trust, anxiety, prosocial behavior
- MeSH terms
- Administration, Intranasal, Animals, Cognition, Humans, Oxytocin, Psychotropic Drugs, Social Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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