Abstract
There are currently no drugs approved for the treatment of social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). One hypothesis for these deficits is that individuals with ASD lack the motivation to attend to social cues because those cues are not implicitly rewarding. Therefore, any drug that could enhance the rewarding quality of social stimuli could have a profound impact on the treatment of ASD, and other social disorders. Oxytocin (OT) is a neuropeptide that has been effective in enhancing social cognition and social reward in humans. The present study examined the ability of OT to selectively enhance learning after social compared to nonsocial reward in rhesus monkeys, an important species for modeling the neurobiology of social behavior in humans. Monkeys were required to learn an implicit visual matching task after receiving either intranasal (IN) OT or Placebo (saline). Correct trials were rewarded with the presentation of positive and negative social (play faces/threat faces) or nonsocial (banana/cage locks) stimuli, plus food. Incorrect trials were not rewarded. Results demonstrated a strong effect of socially-reinforced learning, monkeys’ performed significantly better when reinforced with social versus nonsocial stimuli. Additionally, socially-reinforced learning was significantly better and occurred faster after IN-OT compared to placebo treatment. Performance in the IN-OT, but not Placebo, condition was also significantly better when the reinforcement stimuli were emotionally positive compared to negative facial expressions. These data support the hypothesis that OT may function to enhance prosocial behavior in primates by increasing the rewarding quality of emotionally positive, social compared to emotionally negative or nonsocial images. These data also support the use of the rhesus monkey as a model for exploring the neurobiological basis of social behavior and its impairment.
Highlights
There are currently no drugs approved for the treatment of social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
Because of these prosocial effects, the oxytocinergic system has emerged as a leading target for the development of novel pharmacotherapies for treating social impairments, like those seen in autism spectrum disorders (ASD; Guastella and MacLeod, 2012; Modi and Young, 2012)
Using an IN aerosolized (AE) administration procedure, Parr et al (2013) reported that OT reduced monkeys’ (N = 6) attention towards negative facial expressions, while increasing attention to direct vs. averted gaze faces. They concluded that INOT may reduce the negative, aversive, or threatening quality of social images which may, in turn, enable monkeys to engage in more prosocial behaviors and/or enhance social learning
Summary
There are currently no drugs approved for the treatment of social deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Like OT and vasopression, are large molecular weight compounds that do not readily cross the blood brain barrier when given peripherally, several studies have confirmed the effectiveness of an intranasal (IN) administration route for delivering these compounds to the central nervous system (CNS) in humans and animals (Born et al, 2002; Chang et al, 2012; Neumann et al, 2013; Striepens et al, 2013; Modi et al, 2014) Using this method, studies have reported broad effects of OT on the perception of social stimuli including increasing the salience of the eyes in faces (Guastella et al, 2008; Andari et al, 2010), altering the perception of facial expressions (Domes et al, 2007a,b; Fischer-Shofty et al., 2010; Gamer et al, 2010; Parr et al, 2013), enhancing memory for face identity (Savaskan et al, 2008; Rimmele et al, 2009), and decreasing social vigilance (Ebitz et al, 2013). If the choice was between rewarding another monkey vs. rewarding no one, IN-OT enhanced the subjects’
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