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Long-term intranasal oxytocin therapy does not rescue reduced neural sensitivity towards expressive faces in autism

Year: 2022
Type: conference-abstract
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate difficulties in social behaviour and non-verbal communication. A crucial skill for human social interaction is the ability to quickly and accurately extract information from a person’s face. Frequency-tagging EEG is a novel tool to quantify face-processing sensitivity in a robust and implicit manner. We implemented this technique in an oxytocin (OT) clinical trial, to monitor the outcome of OT pharmacotherapy in ASD. In addition, we investigated endogenous OT levels of all participants. We hypothesised to observe reduced neural sensitivity for expressive faces in ASD, as well as reduced endogenous OT levels, and we expected that OT pharmacotherapy may enhance this neural response. Children with ASD (n=61, 8-12 years old) participated in a four-week multiple-dose randomized double-blind placebo-controlled OT trial. Age-matched neurotypical (NT) control children (n=39) participated in the baseline measurement. First, as expected, we demonstrated reduced neural sensitivity towards emotional faces in ASD compared to the NT control group, replicating previous findings of Van der Donck et al. (2019, 2020). Secondly, and strikingly, we found a further reduction of the neural sensitivity towards emotional faces post-treatment in the OT group compared to the placebo group. Thus, contrary to our hypothesis, we can conclude that OT pharmacotherapy does not rescue reduced neural responses towards expressive faces in ASD. At the conference, we will complement these findings with data on the endogenous OT levels.
Authors: Tibermont, L, Moerkerke, Matthijs, Van der Donck, S, Daniels, N, Tang, T, Willems, L, Vanaudenaerde, B, Steyaert, J, Alaerts, K, Boets, B
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7057885763
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