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Love hormone helps high-functioning autistics with social cues

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Giving oxytocin -- the love and cuddle drug that bonds mother to child and lover to lover -- to high-functioning autistic patients helps them pay better attention to visual cues on other people's faces, something that autistic people have difficulties with.

The study, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is one of several in the past few years which have shown that people with autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger's, who have high intellectual function but difficulty interpreting social cues, might be aided by oxytocin.

In this study, researchers in France gave 13 patients inhaled oxytocin and then had them play a virtual ball-passing game which required players to take visual cues from other player's faces. The patients who were treated with oxytocin were more likely to process those visual cues and were also likely to be more attentive to faces in general.

Patients who got oxytocin responded most strongly to other players who reciprocated strongly. Without oxytocin the patients didn't take the behavior of other players into account and didn't respond any differently to players who responded to them more or less.

The effect was transient, but the researchers, from the Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive at the National Center for Scientific Research in Bron and the Institute National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in Créteil, note that "it serves to show that these patients are quite able to engage in social relationships."

Oxytocin (ox-ee-toe-son) is a hormone that is best known for causing the rush of love a nursing mother feels for her infant. It also has been shown to aid sexual pair bonding, social recognition and love, among other things.

By Elizabeth Weise

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