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 is the normal response of reward circuits in children’s brains?
Increased activity when looking at faces; decreased activity when looking at cars Increased activity when looking at cars; decreased activity when looking at faces It depends if their age is eight or 16 The same activity when looking at faces and cars