Influence of intranasal oxytocin on fear consolidation in healthy humans. Issue 6 (18th December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hoge, Elizabeth; Bui, Eric; Rosencrans, Peter; Orr, Scott; Ross, Rachel; Ojserkis, Rebecca; Simon, Naomi
• Is Part Of: General psychiatry. Volume 32:Issue 6(2019)
• Publication Date: 2019-12-18
• Subjects: fear conditioning -- oxytocin -- extinction learning; Psychiatry -- Periodicals; 616.89
• DOI: 10.1136/gpsych-2019-100131
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2096-5923

Abstract

Abstract : Background: Although recent data in healthy humans suggestthat treatment with intranasal oxytocin (OT) may facilitate extinction recall, to date, little is known about the effects of OT on memory consolidationprocesses. Aim: To examine the effect of intranasal administration of OT compared with placebo on memory consolidation blockade of a de novo fear memory in a classical 2-day fear conditioning procedure. Results: There were no significant differences between the OT and the placebo groups on the first two extinction trials (mean (SD)=0.01 (0.39) vs 0.15 (0.31), t=−1.092, p=0.28). Similarly, during early extinction, analysis of variance for repeated measures failed to show significant main effects of extinction trials: trials ( F (4, 112)=1.58, p=0.18), drug ( F (1, 112)=0.13, p=0.72) or drug × trials interaction ( F (4, 112)=0.76, p=0.56). Conclusion: Our results suggest that OT administered in a double-blind fashion immediately after fear conditioning does not significantly reduce consolidation of fear learning as measured by a differential skin conductance response tested at the beginning of extinction.