Oxytocin has been suggested as a promising new treatment for
neurodevelopmental disorders. However, important gaps remain in our understanding of its mode of action, in particular, to what extent
oxytocin modulates social and non-social behaviours and whether its effects are generalizable across both sexes. Here we investigated the effects of a range of
oxytocin doses on social and non-social behaviours in C57BL/6N mice of both sexes. As the striatum modulates social and non-social behaviours, and is implicated in
neurodevelopmental disorders, we also conducted a pilot exploration of changes in striatal
protein expression elicited by
oxytocin.
Oxytocin increased prepulse inhibition of startle but attenuated the recognition memory in male C57BL/6N mice. It increased social interaction time and suppressed the
amphetamine locomotor response in both sexes. The striatum
proteome following
oxytocin exposure could be clearly discriminated from saline controls. With the caveat that these results are preliminary,
oxytocin appeared to alter individual
protein expression in directions similar to conventional anti-psychotics. The
proteins affected by
oxytocin could be broadly categorized as those that modulate glutamatergic, GABAergic or dopaminergic signalling and those that mediate cytoskeleton dynamics. Our results here encourage further research into the clinical application of this
peptide hormone, which may potentially extend treatment options across a spectrum of neurodevelopmental conditions.