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. 2020 Aug 17;26(1):80–91. doi: 10.1038/s41380-020-00864-7

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© The Author(s) 2020

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 1 — Endogenous oxytocin is primarily produced in the hypothalamus, within the supraoptic (SON) and paraventricular (PVN) nuclei (right inset). Synthesized oxytocin is stored for peripheral release in the posterior pituitary and also secreted within the brain via axonal and dendritic release mechanisms. Intranasally administered exogenous oxytocin travels both to the brain, via olfactory and trigeminal nerve fibers, and the periphery via the highly vascularized nasal cavity. Only very small amounts of peripherally circulating oxytocin are thought to cross the blood-brain barrier owing to an endothelial barrier with tight junctions (left inset), however, these amounts might still be biologically relevant. Image created with BioRender.com.