Oxytocin has sex-specific effects on social behaviour and hypothalamic oxytocin immunoreactive cells but not hippocampal neurogenesis in adult rats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Oxytocin regulates social behaviours, pair bonding and hippocampal neurogenesis but most studies have used adult males. Our study investigated the effects of oxytocin on social investigation and adult hippocampal neurogenesis in male and female rats. Oxytocin has poor penetration of the blood-brain barrier, therefore we tested a nanoparticle drug, TRIOZAN TM (Ovensa Inc.), which permits greater blood-brain-barrier penetration. Adult male and female rats were injected daily (i.p.) for 10 days with either: oxytocin in PBS (0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg), oxytocin in TRIOZAN TM (0.5 or 1.0 mg/kg), or vehicle (PBS) and tested for social investigation. Oxytocin decreased body mass and increased social investigation and number of oxytocin-immunoreactive cells in the supraoptic nucleus (SON) of the hypothalamus in male rats only. In both sexes, oxytocin decreased the number of immature neurons (doublecortin+ cells) in the ventral hippocampus and reduced plasma 17β-estradiol levels in a dose- and delivery-dependent way. Oxytocin in TRIOZAN TM reduced sedation observed post-injection and increased some central effects (oxytocin levels in the hypothalamus and ventral hippocampus neurogenesis) relative to oxytocin in PBS indicating that the nanoparticle may be used as an alternative brain delivery system. We showed that oxytocin has sex-specific effects on social investigation, body mass, sedation, and the oxytocin system. In contrast, similar effects were observed in both sexes in neurogenesis and plasma 17β-estradiol. Our work suggests that sex differences in oxytocin regulation of brain endpoints is region-specific (hypothalamus versus hippocampus) and that oxytocin does not promote social investigation in females.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".