
A team led by Angela Sirigu of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon, France, tried the experiment after previous research found that blood levels of oxytocin 're low among individuals with autism, a condition that afflicts social behaviour.
- Oxytocin was tested among 13 patients suffering on high-functioning autism patients or with Asperger's syndrome.
- The individuals had normal intellectual capacities but had problems in making contact in social situations.
- The researchers observed the patients & controls, who were not given oxytocin, in a virtual game of passing a ball, this was to measure behavioural changes.
- They then measured attentiveness to socially important cues when the patients viewed pictures of human faces.
- Patients who had inhaled oxytocin showed more attentiveness to visual cues when viewing human faces and were more likely to process social cues during the virtual ball passing game than controls in both experiments.
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