Vasotocin improves intelligence and attention in mentally retarded children

In mentally retarded (MR) prepubertal children, investigated both before and after six months of treatment, synthetic arginine vasotocin (AVT) (10(-6) mg/day/0.1 ml, intranasally), but not oxytocin or saline alone, significantly increased the intelligence quotient (IQ) and improved the attention parameters without affecting the short-term memory. Taking into account both the psychometric results and the clinical observations, the effects of AVT could be mainly explained by assuming the improvement of attention. Since there was a significant inverse correlation between the pretreatment levels of the IQ and attention scores and their increase after AVT, and since the AVT effects tend to be more intense in autistic children, we hypothesize that the more affected the attention mechanisms, the more they are sensitive to AVT. The present results are tentatively explained by the paradoxical sleep-enhancing properties of AVT, mechanisms by which AVT could improve the brain plasticity in MR subjects and by this, the attention performance.