Abstract
Research utilizing intranasal oxytocin (OT) administration has shown that OT may increase attention and sensitivity to social cues, such as faces. Given the pivotal role of OT in parental behaviors across mammals, the paucity of intranasal OT research investigating responses to social cues in parents and particularly mothers of young children is a critical limitation. In the current study, we recorded cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate whether intranasal OT affects the early neural responses to emotional faces in mothers of 1-year-old infants. Using a double-blind, within-subjects design, mothers (n = 38) were administered intranasal OT and placebo on separate sessions and presented with happy and sad infant and adult faces while ERP components reflecting face-sensitive brain activation and attention allocation were measured. We hypothesized that ERP responses to faces would be larger in the OT condition and that the effects of OT on ERP responses would be more pronounced for infant faces. The amplitudes of the face-sensitive N170 ERP component were larger in the OT condition to infant and adult faces, but no clear support was found for the hypothesis that the responses to infant faces would be more susceptible to OT effects than the responses to adult faces. The attention-sensitive late positive potential (LPP) component was not modulated by intranasal substance condition. The results are in line with the view that OT acts to enhance the perceptual salience of social and emotional stimuli. Demonstrating such effects in mothers of young children encourages further investigation of the potential of intranasal OT to affect the perception of social cues relevant for parent-child interaction.
Highlights
Conradi-Hu€nermann-Happle syndrome is a rare X-linked dominant disorder of cholesterol metabolism that results in a spectrum of skeletal, cutaneous, and ocular abnormalities with an estimated prevalence of 1 in 100,000.1,2 The disorder results from a mutation in the emopamil-binding protein (EBP) gene encoding EBP, a 3b-hydroxysteroid-d8, d7-isomerase.[3]
The mutation is lethal in boys, but in girls it results in a mosaic pattern of congenital ichthyosiform erythroderma within the first months of life, evolving into linear follicular atrophoderma and hypopigmented whorls distributed along Blaschko lines.[3,4,5]
A skeletal survey found butterfly deformities of multiple thoracic vertebrae; deficient ossification in T10, T11, and L1 vertebrae; and scattered punctate opacities throughout the thoracic and upper lumbar spine. This infant presented with a generalized ichthyosiform erythroderma consistent with ConradiHu€nermann-Happle syndrome with highly characteristic histologic features
Summary
Dystrophic calcifications point the way—Unusual and early diagnostic clue of Conradi-Hu€nermann-Happle syndrome.
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