ReviewMolecular psychiatry2022
Oxytocin and the social facilitation of placebo effects.
Review in Molecular psychiatry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of intranasal oxytocin on social reward processing in humans: a systematic review.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Predictors of Placebo Response in the Study of Oxytocin in Autism to Improve Reciprocal Social Behaviors.Journal of child and adolescent psychopharmacology · 2025Trial
- Reduction of oxytocin plasma levels in borderline personality disorder and normalization induced by psychotherapies.Psychological medicine · 2025Trial
- Chronic oxytocin administration stimulates the oxytocinergic system in children with autism.Nature communications · 2024Trial
- A scoping review of music-based digital therapeutics for stress, anxiety, and depression.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Review
- The Role of Oxytocin and Sex in Analgesic Placebo-Response: Exploratory Analysis from a Sham Randomized Clinical Trial in Chronic Back-Pain Patients.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin Across Various Depressive Disorders.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- The psychophysiology of music-based interventions and the experience of pain.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Biological principles for music and mental health.Translational psychiatry · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Significant clinical improvement is often observed in patients who receive placebo treatment in randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials. While a proportion of this "improvement" reflects experimental design limitations (e.g., reliance on subjective outcomes, unbalanced groups, reporting biases), some of it reflects genuine improvement corroborated by physiological change. Converging evidence across diverse medical conditions suggests that clinically-relevant benefits from placebo treatment are associated with the activation of brain reward circuits. In parallel, evidence has accumulated showing that such benefits are facilitated by clinicians that demonstrate warmth and proficiency during interactions with patients. Here, we integrate research on these neural and social aspects of placebo effects with evidence linking oxytocin and social reward to advance a neurobiological account for the social facilitation of placebo effects. This account frames oxytocin as a key mediator of treatment success across a wide-spectrum of interventions that increase social connectedness, thereby providing a biological basis for assessing this fundamental non-specific element of medical care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.