Null and Noteworthy: Brain aging, oxytocin pathways, biomarker back-up
Null and replicated results in this month’s newsletter tackle aging, a purported pathway for oxytocin’s effects on autistic people, and a possible autism biomarker.
Null and replicated results in this month’s newsletter tackle aging, a purported pathway for oxytocin’s effects on autistic people, and a possible autism biomarker.
Oxytocin therapies have failed to consistently benefit autistic people, but their effects in people with two autism-linked conditions may yield new insights, experts argue.
A researcher’s existential crisis led to a scientific breakthrough.
Genetic factors could help explain why the ‘social hormone’ failed to benefit autistic people in a phase 3 clinical trial last year.
Infusions of the hormone oxytocin may make mice that model autism more social by normalizing their brain activity patterns.
Oxytocin, cemented in the popular imagination as the “love molecule,” could serve as a treatment for some autistic people who naturally have low levels of the hormone, researchers say.
The hormone is no better than placebo at boosting social behavior in autistic children, according to a new study, but it may still benefit a subset of people with the condition.
In this edition of Null and Noteworthy, tests of intranasal oxytocin and an Angelman syndrome treatment fail to see results.
Treating mice missing the autism-linked gene CNTNAP2 with a strain of gut bacteria makes them more social but no less hyperactive.
To guard against hype, scientists studying oxytocin’s role in autism and its potential as a treatment need to embrace robust theories, rigorous delivery methods and reproducible research practices.