Oxytocin as Adjunctive Treatment of Schizophrenia

The focus of the current project is to advance our understanding of the effects of oxytocin (OT) on components of social cognition in schizophrenia (SCZ). Despite the rapid increase in our understanding of the role of OT in rodent models of social behavior and an explosion of interest in the prosocial effects of OT in healthy controls, little work has been done to dissect the potential effects of OT on SCZ subjects with social deficits. Social deficits are a crucial aspect of the functional impairments that limit the rehabilitation of patients with SCZ. In particular, SCZ patients with enduring negative symptoms (deficit syndrome, Kirkpatrick et al. 1989) have prominent social deficits as a core feature of this subtype of the illness. Our currently available medications do very little to improve these social deficits. Hence it is of utmost public health importance to address the knowledge gap regarding the potential of OT to improve social function in this illness. Intact social function depends on the competent functioning of several cognitive domains that subserve perception of social cues and the generation of motivated social behavior. We propose to conduct a pharmacological challenge study of OT vs. placebo administration to study the effects of OT on specific components of social cognition in male deficit syndrome SCZ subjects. Primary Hypothesis: Intranasal OT will improve social cognition in subjects with deficit syndrome SCZ.