Integrative approaches utilizing oxytocin to enhance prosocial behavior: from animal and human social behavior to autistic social dysfunction

Abstract

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is as high as 1 in 100 individuals and is a heavy burden to society. Thus, identifying causes and treatments is imperative. Here, we briefly review the topics covered in our 2012 Society for Neuroscience Mini-Symposium entitled "Integrative Approaches Using Oxytocin to Enhance Prosocial Behavior: From Animal and Human Social Behavior to ASD's Social Dysfunction." This work is not meant to be a comprehensive review of oxytocin and prosocial behavior. Instead, we wish to share the newest findings on the effects of oxytocin on social behavior, the brain, and the social dysfunction of ASD at the molecular, genetic, systemic, and behavior levels, in varied subjects ranging from animal models to humans suffering from autism for the purpose of promoting further study for developing the clinical use of oxytocin in treating ASD.

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Figure 1.

An integrative and translational model using oxytocin to enhance prosocial behavior: from animal and human social behavior to ASD's social dysfunction. Individual differences in genetically determined factors related to oxytocin such as SNPs in oxytocin receptor genes (OXTR) and CD38 in humans and OXTR/CD38 knock-out mice (Takayanagi et al., 2005; Jin et al., 2007) shape individual differences at the neural level such as function and structure in the limbic and paralimbic brain regions. Individual differences in these brain functions and structures should generate behavioral characteristics ranging from normal to extremes, including various social behaviors such as pair bonding, parental care, mate guarding, selective partner preference, monogamy, empathy, trust, ethnocentrism, social anxiety, social withdrawal, and ASD's social dysfunctions. Although human and animal studies are in different streams, genetic factors related to oxytocin and their neural and behavioral phenotypes are homologous at each level. It is expected that the therapeutic effects of exogenous oxytocin or its agonists can improve the behavioral and neural phenotypes associated with oxytocin-related genetic factors. Furthermore, early or long-term administration of oxytocin might even have an effect at the genetic (e.g., epigenetic, such as methylation of OXTR) level.