'Cuddle Hormone¿ Could Treat Autism

(NewsCore) - A brain chemical dubbed the “cuddle hormone” could help people with autism to cope better with social interaction, a leading American psychiatrist said Sunday.

The hormone oxytocin, which helps mother and baby bonding and creates feelings of trust between lovers, is known to play a crucial role in face recognition, social bonding and interpreting gestures -- tasks with which autistic people typically struggle.

Although the hormone would not be a cure for the condition it could boost “social intelligence” and make day-to-day exchanges easier, Thomas Insel, director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, said.

“These pro-social compounds could help people with autism improve their social interactions,” he told the Seventh Forum of European Neuroscience (FENS) in Amsterdam.

Oxytocin can improve the social behavior of people with high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, work by French scientists recently showed.

After inhaling oxytocin, volunteers paid more attention to people’s faces in a ball game task and favored the most cooperative players; previously they passed the ball indiscriminately.

Other work suggested specific variants of genes that code for oxytocin receptors were linked to a higher risk of autism.

In his lecture, Insel said there was emerging evidence that the brain network we use in social interaction is different from other forms of learning and memory and that oxytocin acts as chemical “glue” within the brain to bond personal relationships.

If a link between autism and oxytocin receptor genes is confirmed, it would provide an explanation for why some people with the condition have high general intelligence but find basic social interactions difficult.

(This article is provided by NewsCore, which aggregates news from around News Corporation.)