Table 3.

The effect of oxytocin administration on brain response to infant and child faces.

Study	Participants	Face age	OXT dose	Face presentation	Behavior task	Contrasts	WB/ROI	Neural effect of OXT
Voorthuis et al., 2014	50 nulliparous women: 18–27 years	N/A	16 IU	5 s	Adapted version of the Infant Facial Expressions of Emotions from Looking at Pictures (IFEEL pictures) task: to indicate the child's emotional state or the gender	Emotion > gender judgment	ROI ROI	↑L STG ↑L MTG
Wittfoth-Schardt et al., 2012	21 Fathers: 39.3 ± 6.2 years	3–6 years	24 IU	2 s	Implicit facial processing	Own > familiar child	ROI	↓ L GP
						Unfamiliar > familiar child	ROI WB ROI WB WB WB	↓ L GP (PUT) ↓ L preCG ↓ L HIPP (AMY) ↓ L/R MTG ↓ L STG ↓ L SMG (IPS)
						Own > unfamiliar child	WB	↑ L CAU
						Own > familiar child (functional connectivity)	ROI/WB ROI/WB ROI/WB ROI/WB	↓ L GP, R GP ↓ L GP, L MFG ↓ L GP, L HIPP ↓ L GP, R SPL
Gregory et al., 2015	30 nulliparous female; 29 postpartum female (16 primiparous, 13 multiparous); 20-40 years	N/A	24 IU	2s	One-back matching task: A sexually explicit, crying infant, smiling infant and neutral photos.	Crying infant > fixation	ROI	↓VTA

OXT, oxytocin; IU, international unit; WB, whole brain analysis; ROI, regions of interest analysis; L, left; R, right; ↑, increased; ↓, decreased. Abbreviations of brain regions: see Table 2.