Trial reportProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Post-encoding administration of oxytocin selectively enhances memory consolidation of male faces in females.
Trial report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Post-encoding administration of oxytocin selectively enhances memory consolidation of male faces in females.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Trial
- Oxytocin specifically participates in social memory encoding by exciting stellate neurons in the lateral entorhinal cortex.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Oxytocin plays a critical role in modulating social cognition and enhancing human memory for faces. However, it remains unclear which phase of memory oxytocin affects to enhance face memory. Our study explored oxytocin's potential to selectively enhance the consolidation of social memories, specifically human faces, and whether this effect varies between genders. In three preregistered, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials with heterosexual participants (total N = 445, comprising 227 males and 218 females), we explored how oxytocin affects memory consolidation. We administered oxytocin immediately after encoding (i.e., Study 1), before retrieval (i.e., Study 2), and before encoding (i.e., Study 3) in three parallel studies. This design allowed us to confirm that oxytocin's effects were indeed due to consolidation rather than retrieval or encoding. We found that administering oxytocin post-encoding, but not before-retrieval or before-encoding, significantly improved female participants' ability to recognize male faces 24 h later, with no similar enhancement observed in males recognizing opposite-gender faces. Together with our analyses of the social placebo effect-where the belief in receiving oxytocin produces effects similar to those of actual intranasal oxytocin administration-and the approachability ratings during encoding, we concluded that oxytocin specifically enhances the consolidation of long-term social memories in women recognizing male faces. These findings imply that oxytocin selectively enhances the consolidation of human social memory, potentially deepening our understanding of the mechanisms underlying social memory processes.
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.