ArticleFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience2014
Oxytocin facilitates social approach behavior in women.
Article in Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
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Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed, 111 citations in OpenAlex.
- Oxytocin effects on the resting-state mentalizing brain network.Brain imaging and behavior · 2020Trial
- Augmenting Prolonged Exposure therapy for PTSD with intranasal oxytocin: A randomized, placebo-controlled pilot trial.Journal of psychiatric research · 2018Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin increases neural responses to social reward in post-traumatic stress disorder.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Oxytocin enhances cognitive control of food craving in women.Human brain mapping · 2016Trial
- Intranasal Oxytocin Administration Dampens Amygdala Reactivity towards Emotional Faces in Male and Female PTSD Patients.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- Oxytocin Facilitates Pavlovian Fear Learning in Males.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2016Trial
- The neuropeptide oxytocin modulates consumer brand relationships.Scientific reports · 2015Trial
- The influence of oxytocin on volitional and emotional ambivalence.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2015Trial
- Social touch-like tactile stimulation alleviates stress-induced anxiety-like behavior by enhancing the oxytocin level in the prefrontal cortex.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Oxytocin neurons in the anterior and posterior paraventricular nucleus have distinct behavioral functions and electrophysiological profiles.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Oxytocin-induced modulation of explicit and implicit visual perspective taking.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Natural variation in the oxytocin receptor gene predicts social observation in female prairie voles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Oxytocin neurons in the anterior and posterior paraventricular nucleus have distinct behavioral functions and electrophysiological profiles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- How does oxytocin modulate human behavior?Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- The Role of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in People with Borderline Personality Disorder: A Closer Look at Adolescents.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Melanocortin agonism in a social context selectively activates nucleus accumbens in an oxytocin-dependent manner.Neuropharmacology · 2024Article
- Exploring a Possible Interplay between Schizophrenia, Oxytocin, and Estrogens: A Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- COPE and oxytocin for the treatment of co-occurring PTSD and alcohol use disorder: Design and methodology of a randomized controlled trial in U.S. military veterans.Contemporary clinical trials · 2023Article
- Progress in Personalized Psychiatric Therapy with the Example of Using Intranasal Oxytocin in PTSD Treatment.Journal of personalized medicine · 2022Review
- Oxytocin and the Neurobiology of Prosocial Behavior.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In challenging environments including both numerous threats and scarce resources, the survival of an organism depends on its ability to quickly escape from dangers and to seize opportunities to gain rewards. The phylogenetically ancient neurohormonal oxytocin (OXT) system has been shown to influence both approach and avoidance (AA) behavior in men, but evidence for comparable effects in women is still lacking. We thus conducted a series of pharmacological behavioral experiments in a randomized double-blind study involving 76 healthy heterosexual women treated with either OXT (24 IU) or placebo intranasally. In Experiment 1, we tested how OXT influenced the social distance subjects maintained between themselves and either a female or male experimenter. In Experiment 2, we applied a reaction time based AA task. In Experiment 3 we investigated effects on peri-personal space by measuring the lateral attentional bias in a line bisection task. We found that OXT specifically decreased the distance maintained between subjects and the male but not the female experimenter and also accelerated approach toward pleasant social stimuli in the AA task. However, OXT did not influence the size of peri-personal space, suggesting that it does not alter perception of personal space per se, but rather that a social element is necessary for OXT's effects on AA behavior to become evident. Taken together, our results point to an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism by which OXT in women selectively promotes approach behavior in positive social contexts.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.