Intranasal Oxytocin and Maternal Neglect

The investigators plan to conduct fMRI scanning with a group of mothers who are blindly and
randomly assigned either intranasal oxytocin or a placebo. The purpose of this investigation
is to explore both neuroendocrine and experiential factors contributing to the problem of
parental neglect, and examine how oxytocin may modify early maternal brain and behavioral
responses to infant cues.

In addition, the investigators will examine sex differences in parental brain and behavioral
responses to oxytocin by also recruiting the male partner of enrolled mothers to participate
in a similar protocol.

Aim 1: To determine whether intranasal oxytocin (IN-OT) affects parental brain responses to
infant cues, as measured during functional MRI (fMRI) scanning.

Hypothesis 1 (i): Compared to placebo, mothers who receive intranasal oxytocin will show
greater activation of mesocorticolimbic dopamine reward regions in the brain, including the
ventral striatum and the medial prefrontal cortex, when viewing their own vs. unknown infant
faces during fMRI scanning. Hypothesis 1 (ii): Compared to placebo, fathers will show
greater activation of social-cognitive circuits, including the dorsal prefrontal cortex
(dPFC).

Aim 2: To determine whether IN-OT affects parental behavioral responses to infant cues, as
measured by videotaped parent-infant interaction procedures.

Hypothesis 2 (i): Compared to placebo, parents who receive intranasal oxytocin will score
higher on an overall measure of maternal sensitivity, during a free play parent-infant
interaction procedure (CARE-Index). Hypothesis 2 (ii): Compared to placebo, mothers who
receive intranasal oxytocin will demonstrate more frequent emotionally contingent responses
with their infant during the recovery phase of a modified Still-Face procedure.

Aim 3: To determine whether attachment security interacts with the effect of IN-OT on
maternal brain and behavioral responses to infant cues.

Hypothesis 3 (i): Compared to secure (Type B) mothers, mothers with insecure/dismissing
(Type A) attachment will have a greater brain and behavioral response to IN-OT (as described
in Hypotheses 1 and 2), with a 2-way interaction effect seen between treatment and
attachment groups. Hypothesis 3 (ii): Compared to Type B mothers, mothers with
insecure/preoccupied (Type C) attachment will have a reduced brain and behavioral response
to IN-OT (as described in Hypotheses 1 and 2), with a 2-way interaction effect seen between
treatment and attachment groups.

Aim 4: To determine whether brain reward activation is associated with other indirect
measures of emotional neglect in mothers.

Hypothesis 4 (i): Maternal brain reward system activation, both with and without IN-OT, will
be positively correlated with 1) maternal sensitivity (as measured by the CARE-Index), 2)
the contingency of maternal responses to infant behavioral cues.

Initial enrollment: Recruitment will occur during the postpartum period. At this time
contact information from the patient chart through the Texas Children's Hospital system EPIC
database, will be collected for follow-up contact. In addition to recruiting from EPIC, the
investigators plan to execute other recruiting measures in the form of advertising.
Parent(s) will be recruited via newspaper, internet, public postings, and mass mailings. All
internet, newspaper, public postings, and mass mailings will require parent(s) to directly
contact the study in order to participate. Once eligibility is confirmed, subjects will be
scheduled for a study visit where they will be informed of confidentiality and consented
before participating in any study activities.

Visit 1: 4 Months Post-Partum - Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). During this visit, each
enrolled woman will participate in a modified version of the Adult Attachment Interview
(AAI), a semi-structured 1½-2 hour-long interview involving specified questions and
follow-up inquiries relating to childhood relationships with attachment figures. The
attachment classifications will be revealed only to a third party group which will balance
the order in which oxytocin or placebo is administered, based on attachment group. The
investigators will also collect sociodemographic, breastfeeding data, and screening
information for depression. The EPDS will be repeated during subsequent visits in order to
calculate mean scores.

Visits 2A&B and 3A&B: Intranasal Oxytocin vs. Placebo Administration In this double-blind
cross-over placebo-controlled trial of intranasal oxytocin, maternal brain and behavioral
responses to infant cues will be assessed within & between subjects. Each participant will
be administered both the active (oxytocin) and inactive (placebo) nasal spray just prior to
separate behavioral or fMRI scanning sessions, with order of administration balanced across
subjects and between attachment groups. All involved will be blinded to the identity of the
oxytocin or placebo sprays. Before each visit, parent(s) will be asked to abstain from
tobacco, food and drink (except water) for at least 2 hours prior to the visit. The
investigators will attempt to schedule visits during the latter half of the mother's
menstrual cycle, to minimize potential confounding from fluctuations in estrogen levels.
Mothers without regular menstrual cycles will be scheduled one month apart. Mothers who are
still breastfeeding will be asked to feed their infant at least one hour prior to the visit.
For the four visits involving intranasal drug administration (two behavioral testing visits
and two fMRI scanning visits), the following protocol will apply: participants will be given
a urinary pregnancy test prior to the start of each visit. If a mother tests positive, she
will be excluded from the study due to theoretical concern about possible effects of
oxytocin on uterine contraction. Due to the fact that the pregnancy test may still not
detect an early pregnancy, the mothers will also be asked to abstain from unprotected sexual
intercourse during the 2 weeks prior to the visit, and will confirm, in signing the consent
form, that there is no substantial chance of a current pregnancy. Just prior to drug
administration, the parent(s) will complete the Positive and Negative Affect Scale, to rate
her current emotions, for comparison to post-spray. The parent(s) will then self-administer
a dose of either oxytocin (3 puffs per nostril [4 IU per puff] = 24 IU total) or a placebo
spray that contains only the inactive ingredients of the oxytocin solution. Both
experimenters and subjects will be blind to the treatment they are receiving. A stopwatch
will be started at the moment the subjects begins intranasal administration, so that the
behavior assessment or fMRI scanning can begin exactly 50 minutes later. Most other studies
of intranasal oxytocin have used a 50 minutes delay time, based on CSF studies of other
intranasally administered neuropeptides, such as the analogous hormone vasopressin. Forty
minutes after drug administration, the PANAS will be repeated.

Visits 2A&B: 5-6 Months Postpartum - Behavioral Response

1. On arrival, the parent(s) and infant will be escorted into a behavioral observation
room at the Clinical Nutrition Research Center, where the infant will be introduced to
some developmentally appropriate toys. Questionnaires completed at home will be
reviewed (Infant Behavior Questionnaire [IBQ], Parenting Stress Index [PSI] and
demographics and breastfeeding questionnaire), and if incomplete will be completed at
this time.

2. Each parent will then self-administer the nasal spray, which has been previously
randomized by the investigational pharmacy to be either oxytocin or placebo. During the
following waiting period, the Bayley Scales of Infant Development screener will be
completed with the infant, to exclude developmental delays in areas of fine motor,
gross motor, language or social development. This will be performed by a research
associate who has been trained in the use of this standardized tool.

3. Fifty minutes after the nasal spray is administered, each parent will rejoin their
infant to each participate in a videotaped "free play" interaction on the floor for 3
minutes (described below). The recording will later be coded for dyadic interactions
using a 14-point sensitivity scale in the CARE-Index.

4. A modified still-face procedure will then be conducted during the next 3 minutes(as
described below).

5. The parent(s) will then be taken to another area of the building, while the infant is
videotaped to obtain face images that will be used during the subsequent scanning
visits. During the brief separation period, the infant will be secured in a mounted car
seat, and videotaped while using age appropriate toys to elicit smiling (and neutral)
facial expressions. This should last no more than 10 minutes. The parent(s) will not
observe the videotaping to ensure that each infant face image is novel when presented
during the subsequent visits. Crying faces will also be elicited, if necessary, by
briefly leaving the infant alone in the room, secured in the car seat, while the video
recorder is running. The infant will be observed at all times from behind a one-way
mirror, and only left to cry for around 35-40 seconds. Infant cry will also be recorded
at this time.

6. Infant face images with various degrees of affect-happy, neutral and sad-will then be
extracted from the digital video recording, for use in the subsequent fMRI
procedure(Visit 3). The images will be standardized for size, orientation and
background using Adobe Photoshop. All of the face images will be rated on degree of
affect using a 5-point adaptation of the Self-Assessment Manikin(SAM), categorizing
each image into one of five affect groups: very happy, happy, neutral, sad or very sad.
These faces will be matched on age, sex, ethnicity and degree of affect with a large
database of "unknown" infant faces, collected during the previous K23 study.

7. Approximately one month later, at a comparable time in the menstrual cycle, the basic
procedure will be repeated for each subject, except that those who received intranasal
oxytocin will be given placebo, and vice versa.

Visit 3A&B: 8-9 Months Postpartum - Brain Response

1. Three months after the first behavioral response session, each parent will attend two
scanning sessions at the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory, Baylor College of Medicine.
Intranasal oxytocin or placebo will again be administered as described above. Infant
face images from Visit 3A will be used in Visit 4A scanning session, and Visit 3B with
4B, to ensure that the repeat scanning session uses comparable but unique face images.
The images from both sessions will be matched on degree of facial affect. Prior to
intranasal drug administration on the first scanning visit, the parent(s) will complete
the Positive and Negative Affect States (PANAS) questionnaire.

2. During the waiting period, the parent(s) will complete questionnaires.

3. Fifty minutes after the administration of the nasal spray, the parent(s) will
participate in the functional MRI scanning session, passively viewing a series of
unique infant face images and hearing cries of her own infant and of an unknown infant.
Each parent will be informed that their "brain activity will be monitored using
functional MRI while participants are shown pictures of their own baby" and a
within-scanner eye tracking tool will also be utilized to evaluate any effect of
oxytocin on gaze preference for face regions, and to ensure attention to the visual
stimuli. Using an event-related fMRI design, randomly presented images will be viewed
for 2 seconds, with a random inter-stimulus interval of 2, 4 or 6 seconds (Fig 3). The
60 images will be equally divided into 3 affect groups - happy, neutral or sad, with
the intensity of happy and sad affect balanced between the "own" and "unknown" faces.
The order of the images from each of the 6 groups (OH, ON, OS, UH, UN, US) will be
pseudo-randomized within the run, but not between subjects.

4. All imaging will be performed using a 3 Tesla Siemens MRI scanner. Visual images will
be generated using a computer controlled LCD projector, and presented to the parent(s)
via an overhead mirror display. Regional brain activation will be assessed by measuring
changes in blood-oxygen-level-dependent functional MRI signal(BOLD-fMRI).

5. Subjects will participate in a single whole-brain functional run of around 185 scans
each.

6. High-resolution T1-weighted structural images will then be acquired. Raw and processed
fMRI and anatomic data will also be archived on a hard drive associated with the Linux
workstation and backed up in duplicate on DVD.

7. After the scanning session, each parent will be asked to rate each of the infant face
images on how they thought the infant was feeling, as well as their own feelings of
pleasure or arousal, using an adaptation of the Self-Assessment Manikin.

b. After the parent(s) has completed the questionnaires, 2 out of 4 randomly selected
modules of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development screener will be completed with the
infant. This will be performed by a research associate who has been trained in the use of
this standardized tool.

c. The parent(s) will then rejoin their infant to participate in a videotaped "free play"
interaction on the floor for 3 minutes. The recording will later be coded for dyadic
interactions using a 14-point sensitivity scale in the CARE-Index.

Husbands of participants who are also the biological father of the infant will be invited to
join the study to do one CARE-Index visit (receiving either oxytocin or placebo) and 2 fMRI
scans (receiving oxytocin and placebo).

Inclusion Criteria:

In order to fulfill enrollment criteria, the women must:

1. be first-time parent(s)

2. who have just delivered a term infant >37 weeks gestation, without medical
complications.

She should be:

3. aged between 20 and 45 years;

4. and be English speaking from childhood (required for accurate coding of attachment
interview).

For male partners:

1. First-time fathers;

2. have female partners who just delivered a term infant >37 weeks gestation, without
medical complications;

3. aged between 20 and 45 years;

4. English speaking from childhood

Exclusion Criteria:

Those who meet the following, will be excluded:

1. History of head injury resulting in loss of consciousness for >10 minutes;

2. neurological disease, including stroke, brain tumor, meningitis or encephalitis;

3. any contraindications to MRI scanning, e.g. pacemakers, aneurysm clips,
neurostimulators, fixed hearing devices, metal in eyes, or other implants;

4. previous inability to tolerate MRI scanning procedure, or claustrophobia; and

5. a past history of drug addiction or serious psychopathology, other than anxiety or
depression.