Oxytocin (OT) has an ancient role in modulating sensing and responding to social stimuli, from nematodes to man. OT regulates not only mammalian labor and nursing, but also maternal behavior. There is increasing evidence that OT influences human parenting and mediates the impact of parenting on infant socio-emotional development (Rilling and Young, 2014). Preclinical studies suggest that OT increases the salience and rewarding value of social stimuli. OT acts in the rodent amygdala to enhance the salience of social olfactory cues. thereby facilitating social recognition, in the striatum to mediate social reward and in the hippocampus to enhance signal to noise neurotransmission. These fundamental processes likely contribute to more complex OT-mediated behaviors, including social bonding.

The effects of OT on social information processing in rodents make it an enticing pharmacological target for enhancing social cognition. However, two issues introduce skepticism for translating the compelling preclinical observations into effective pharmacotherapies to improve social functioning in psychiatric disorders, including autism and schizophrenia: (1) rodents use olfaction as the primary social perception modality, while primates rely more on visual and auditory social perception; (2) little is known regarding the pharmacokinetics of current OT administration methods or the impact of chronic OT treatment. Recent studies from our laboratory address these issues.

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