Autism, oxytocin, and social interactions: Identification of neural mechanisms and drug candidates

Individuals with autism suffer from social deficits, often accompanied by atypical processing of social stimuli. No effective treatment is available, but intranasal treatment with oxytocin promotes attention to social cues.

Although encouraging, the neuronal mechanisms underlying oxytocin’s social action are not fully elucidated, and the effects of intranasal oxytocin are relatively moderate and short-lived.

To understand the underlying neurobiology of oxytocin’s actions, and to identify drugs that instead increase endogenous oxytocin, we will use zebrafish, that we recently have shown is an optimal model organism system for investigations of oxytocin’s actions on visual social processing. The three projects will be performed in my laboratory, together with collaborators, during the five project years.

By using behavioural, biochemical and immunohistological methods in larval and adult zebrafish the current project has great potential to advance our understanding about the neural mechanisms mediating oxytocin’s effects on social attention.

Furthermore, drug-screening will be conducted on transgenic and mutant larval zebrafish with state-of-art imaging technologies as well as with sophisticated behavioural testing.

The ability to screen many substances in relevant in vivo models gives a unique possibility to identify drugs that enhances sociability and that with a variety of mechanisms of action.