Trust pills anyone?

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" Trust hormone " now tied to " mind reading " —and increasingly, autism

An unusual hor­mone has a grow­ing list of doc­u­ment­ed pow­ers, some of

them sur­p­ris­ing—and int­ri­guing to sci­ent­ists hunt­ing aut­ism treat­

ments.

Dec. 13, 2006

Special to World Science

Re­search­ers in re­cent years have in­tense­ly stud­ied a hor­mone thought

to be re­le­vant to aut­ism, a dis­or­der that has stirred grow­ing alarm.

And the longer the scru­ti­ny of the hor­mone, ox­y­to­cin, goes on, the

longer grows a list of some­times sur­pris­ing pow­ers at­tri­buted to it.

These are prompt­ing sci­ent­ists to pro­pose the chem­i­cal might help

treat aut­ism.

The " Read­ing the Mind in the Eyes Test " in­volves view­ing 36 pho­tos of

eyes, and judg­ing which emo­tion or men­tal state each pair rep­re­sents.

A ver­sion of the test can be tak­en here.

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Last year, one group iden­ti­fied it as a hor­mone that helps us to

trust. Now, re­search­ers say it may also aid us with " mind read­ing, "

or the abil­i­ty to gauge oth­er peo­ple's emo­tions based on sub­tle so­

cial cues.

Ox­y­to­cin has long been known to reg­u­late so­cial in­ter­ac­tions, among

oth­er things. And au­t­ism, which in­volves marked so­cial dif­fi­cul­t­ies,

has been linked to low ox­y­to­cin lev­els.

Thus, the au­thors of two re­cent stud­ies sug­gest ox­y­to­cin might help

treat au­tism. One team al­so re­ported that such a treat­ment im­proved

au­tis­tic pa­tients' abil­i­ty to de­tect emo­tion in speech.

The find­ings " pro­vide pre­lim­i­nar­y sup­port for the use of ox­y­to­cin in

the treat­ment of au­tism, " wrote the re­search­ers, with the Mount Si­nai

School of Med­i­cine in New York, in the Aug. 10 ad­vance on­line edi­tion

of the re­search jour­nal Bi­o­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try. The re­ported im­p­rove­

ments touched on a core feature of au­t­ism, dif­ficul­ty in at­tri­but­ing

emo­tions and thoughts to others, though the re­search­ers didn't spe­cu­

late as to how much this might help al­le­vi­ate the over­all dys­func­tion.

Among oxy­tocin's doc­u­men­ted func­tions is stim­u­lat­ing the mo­ther-in­

fant bond as well as milk ejec­tion dur­ing lac­ta­tion and uter­ine con­

trac­tion dur­ing birth. Above, The Bath by Cas­satt (1891.)

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Ox­y­to­cin, pro­duced in the brain, con­sists of a type of mol­e­cule

called a pep­tide.

Au­tism—brought to wide pub­lic at­ten­tion by the 1988 film " Rain Man "

in which Dus­tin Hoff­man plays an au­tis­tic man—is a brain dis­or­der in­

volv­ing de­fi­cits in so­cial in­ter­ac­tion and speak­ing; ina­bil­i­ty to

treat oth­ers as peo­ple or make friends; un­u­su­al, re­pet­i­tive be­hav­

iors; and some­times ex­traor­di­nary skills in spe­cif­ic ar­eas, of­ten in­

volv­ing math or rote mem­o­ry.

Au­tism di­ag­noses have mys­te­ri­ous­ly surged in the Unit­ed States, Unit­

ed King­dom and some oth­er in­dus­tri­al­ized coun­tries in re­cent years,

trig­ger­ing wide­spread con­cern. Treat­ments exist that help some­what,

but a cure is elu­sive.

Some ex­pe­rts have at­trib­ut­ed the increase to great­er aware­ness, but

oth­ers dis­a­gree. Recent est­i­mates from the U.S. Cen­ters for Dis­ease

Con­trol put the prev­a­lence of au­tism at 3.4 per 1,000.

A mix of poor­ly un­der­stood ge­net­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors are be­

lieved to cause the con­di­tion.

The Mount Si­nai re­search­ers worked with 15 peo­ple di­ag­nosed with ei­

ther au­tism or Aspe­rger's Syn­drome, a si­m­i­lar con­di­tion of­ten viewed

as a mild form of au­tism. In the stu­dy, the pa­tients re­ceived ox­y­to­

cin in­fu­sions and, on a sep­a­rate day, in­fu­sions of an in­ac­tive sub­

stance for com­par­i­son.

The sci­en­tists found that both treat­ments led to bet­ter scores on a

test that in­volved dis­cern­ing the emo­tional tone of pre-recorded

state­ments, but the im­prove­ments lasted long­er with ox­y­to­cin treat­

ment.

A pre­vi­ous stu­dy, pub­lished in the June 2, 2005 is­sue of the re­search

jour­nal Na­ture, found that a whiff of ox­y­to­cin made peo­ple more like­

ly to trust some­one else to look af­ter their cash.

Some com­men­ta­tors started to dub ox­y­to­cin the " trust hor­mone " af­ter

that. But the new­est find­ings sug­gest that its pow­ers in social func­

tion­ing ex­tend well be­yond trust, in­to " mind-reading " abil­i­ty as

well, wrote re­search­ers with Ros­tock Uni­ver­si­ty in Ros­tock, Ger­ma­ny,

in Bi­o­log­i­cal Psy­chi­a­try's Nov. 28, 2006 ad­vance on­line edi­tion.

This group tested 30 healthy men on the " Read­ing the Mind in the Eyes

Test, " which in­volves judg­ing peo­ple's emo­tional state based on pho­

tographs of their eyes. The par­ti­ci­pants sniffed ei­ther ox­y­to­cin or

an in­ac­tive sub­stance, one week apart, and were found to do bet­ter

with the ox­y­to­cin.

Like the two pre­vi­ous stud­ies, it was dou­ble-blind, mean­ing in­ves­ti­ga­

tors weren't aware at any giv­en time of wheth­er par­ti­ci­pants had got­

ten the real or the sham treat­ment.

" The abil­i­ty to `read the mind' of oth­er in­di­vid­u­al, that is, to in­

fer their men­tal state by in­ter­pret­ing sub­tle so­cial cues, is in­dis­

pen­sa­ble in hu­man so­cial in­ter­ac­tion, " the re­search­ers wrote. Be­cause

au­tism is char­ac­ter­ized both by low ox­y­to­cin and " by dis­tinct im­pair­

ments in mind-read­ing, " they added, " ox­y­to­cin should be con­sid­ered a

sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the path­o­gen­e­sis [cause] and treat­ment of au­

tism. "