Trial reportNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2016
Oxytocin Facilitates Pavlovian Fear Learning in Males.
Trial report in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 87 citations in OpenAlex.
- Oxytocin Reduces Subjective Fear in Naturalistic Social Contexts via Enhancing Top-Down Middle Cingulate Amygdala Regulation and Brain-Wide Fear Representations.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Trial
- The interaction of oxytocin and nicotine addiction on psychosocial stress: an fMRI study.Translational psychiatry · 2024Trial
- Effects of exogenous oxytocin and estradiol on resting-state functional connectivity in women and men.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin modulates the salience network in aging.NeuroImage · 2022Trial
- Intranasal oxytocin administration impacts the acquisition and consolidation of trauma-associated memories: a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled experimental study in healthy women.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- Kinetics of oxytocin effects on amygdala and striatal reactivity vary between women and men.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Oxytocin enhances the pain-relieving effects of social support in romantic couples.Human brain mapping · 2019Trial
- Oxytocin differentially modulates pavlovian cue and context fear acquisition.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2017Trial
- Oxytocin enhances cognitive control of food craving in women.Human brain mapping · 2016Trial
- The neuropeptide oxytocin modulates consumer brand relationships.Scientific reports · 2015Trial
- Effects of Oxytocin on Placebo and Nocebo Effects in a Pain Conditioning Paradigm: A Randomized Controlled Trial.The journal of painTrial
- Experiences in close relationships, interpersonal trust and OXTR expression in individuals with childhood maltreatment.Borderline personality disorder and emotion dysregulation · 2026Article
- How does oxytocin modulate human behavior?Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Sniffing oxytocin: Nose to brain or nose to blood?Molecular psychiatry · 2023Article
- Does activation of oxytocinergic reward circuits postpone the decline of the aging brain?Frontiers in psychology · 2023Review
- Placebo and nocebo effects: from observation to harnessing and clinical application.Translational psychiatry · 2022Review
- Oxytocin-based therapies for treatment of Prader-Willi and Schaaf-Yang syndromes: evidence, disappointments, and future research strategies.Translational psychiatry · 2022Review
- Roles of Oxytocin in Stress Responses, Allostasis and Resilience.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Oxytocin and the Neurobiology of Prosocial Behavior.The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2021Review
- Medication-Enhanced Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Recent Findings on Oxytocin's Involvement in the Neurobiology and Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.Clinical psychology in Europe · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In human evolution, social group living and Pavlovian fear conditioning have evolved as adaptive mechanisms promoting survival and reproductive success. The evolutionarily conserved hypothalamic peptide oxytocin is a key modulator of human sociality, but its effects on fear conditioning are still elusive. In the present randomized controlled study involving 97 healthy male subjects, we therefore employed functional magnetic resonance imaging and simultaneous skin conductance response (SCR) measures to characterize the modulatory influence of intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) on Pavlovian fear conditioning. We found that the peptide strengthened conditioning on both the behavioral and neural levels. Specifically, subjects exhibited faster task-related responses and enhanced SCRs to fear-associated stimuli in the late phase of conditioning, which was paralleled by heightened activity in cingulate cortex subregions in the absence of changes in amygdala function. This speaks against amygdalocentric views of oxytocin having pure anxiolytic-like effects. Instead, it suggests that the peptide enables extremely rapid and flexible adaptation to fear signals in social contexts, which may confer clear evolutionary advantages but could also elevate vulnerability for the pathological sequelae of interpersonal trauma.
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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.