Effects of oxytocin on recollections of maternal care and closeness

Jennifer A. Bartz; Jamil Zaki; Kevin N. Ochsner; Niall Bolger; Alexander Kolevzon; Natasha Ludwig; John E. Lydon

doi:10.1073/pnas.1012669107

Edited* by Shelley E. Taylor, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, and approved October 28, 2010 (received for review August 26, 2010)

Abstract

Although the infant–caregiver attachment bond is critical to survival, little is known about the biological mechanisms supporting attachment representations in humans. Oxytocin plays a key role in attachment bond formation and maintenance in animals and thus could be expected to affect attachment representations in humans. To investigate this possibility, we administered 24 IU intranasal oxytocin to healthy male adults in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover designed study and then assessed memories of childhood maternal care and closeness—two features of the attachment bond. We found that the effects of oxytocin were moderated by the attachment representations people possess, with less anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as more caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo) but more anxiously attached individuals remembering their mother as less caring and close after oxytocin (vs. placebo). These data contrast with the popular notion that oxytocin has broad positive effects on social perception and are more consistent with the animal literature, which emphasizes oxytocin's role in encoding social memories and linking those memories to the reward value of the social stimulus.

Footnotes

¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jennifer.bartz{at}mssm.edu.
Author contributions: J.A.B. designed research; J.A.B., A.K., and N.L. performed research; J.A.B. and N.B. analyzed data; and J.A.B., J.Z., K.N.O., N.B., and J.E.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
^†There was a significant effect of drug administration order on change in maternal closeness ratings [b = −0.79, t(26) = −2.29, P < 0.05] but not on change in maternal care ratings (t < 0.5). Importantly, additional analyses showed no order × attachment anxiety interaction (t < 0.5), indicating that the effect of attachment anxiety on change in maternal closeness ratings does not depend on drug administration order.