The scientists scanned the brains of 17 young people aged eight to 16 with autism while they looked at images of cars or the eyes of people expressing different emotions. The scans were given 45 minutes after the young people inhaled a placebo or oxytocin through a nasal spray. The scans showed that the reward circuits in the children’s brains behaved more normally after a dose of oxytocin: that is, they were more active when the person was looking at faces and less active when looking at the inanimate cars. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
What were the two different groups in the experiment?
One group was given oxytocin; the other was given placebo One received oxytocin through injections; the other through a nose spray One group looked at images of cars; the other looked at images of facial expressions One group was given behavioral therapy; the other was given cognitive therapy