A dose of the “love hormone” oxytocin may offer hope to autistic children who suffer severe difficulties in social interaction and communication.
Researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. found that children given the hormone via a nasal spray showed more activity in parts of the brain associated with reward, social perception and emotional awareness.
And they say it should be trialled as a treatment for the disease.
Oxytocin is naturally released when people hug or kiss a loved one. It also has a role in orgasm, the birthing process and breast feeding.
And studies have shown it can promote trust, altruism, emotion recognition and increase sensitivity to eye gaze and co-operation.
In the Yale University study, 17 children aged 8-16 with autism were given a dose of the hormone and asked to perform social and non-social tasks such as classifying a person’s mental state based on the image of their eyes – a social judgment.
They were also asked to categorize pictures of cars – a non-social judgment.
Parts of the brain associated with reward, social perception and emotional awareness showed more activity during social tasks when the hormone was used than without the hormone.
“The functional neural attunement we demonstrated might facilitate social learning, thus potentially bringing about long term change in neural systems and subsequent behavioral improvements,” the authors claim.
However, in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences journal today the researchers note other studies had found oxytocin produced no behavior change in people with autism.
Autistic adults given oxytocin daily for six weeks showed only modest improvements in social functioning.
And autistic children given an oxytocin dose once every morning also exhibited no social changes.
The Yale researchers theorize that the most successful use of oxytocin will be in giving the hormone before behavioral treatments.
Oxytocin may make social interactions more rewarding and help with social learning tasks, they suggest.
Australian researchers reported in 2011 there could be unexpected negative effects from the hormone.
It can increase the negative emotions of gloating and envy and in people with borderline personality disorder oxytocin can decrease trust in others.
An estimated one in 100 people have Autism spectrum disorder, which is almost 230,000 Australians.
The problem affects almost four times as many boys than girls and there is no established medicine to treat the problem.
This story originally appeared on News.com.au.