Oxytocin selectively biases sensory-prefrontal communication through network-level suppression and theta coupling

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Computational Neuroscience
• Social Neuroscience

Background:

• Oxytocin influences social behavior by modulating neural circuits.
• The systems-level impact of oxytocin on large-scale brain networks remains poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how oxytocin affects large-scale neurodynamics in the cortico-limbic network.
• To understand the systems-level mechanisms by which oxytocin facilitates social cue processing.

Main Methods:

• Multisite local field potential recordings in mice.
• Analysis of neural responses to infant calls, auditory steady-state responses, and resting-state activity.
• Investigated spectral power, phase coherence, and Granger-causal connectivity.

Main Results:

• Oxytocin selectively enhanced neural responses to infant calls in auditory cortex and medial prefrontal cortex.
• Reduced baseline activity, increased signal-to-noise ratio, and enhanced AC→mPFC connectivity were observed.
• Oxytocin modulated network dynamics, favoring sensory-to-prefrontal information transfer.

Conclusions:

• Oxytocin reduces background neural activity while selectively strengthening sensory-prefrontal network interactions.
• Provides a systems-level explanation for how local oxytocin modulation aids processing of social cues.
• Links microcircuit changes to large-scale network dynamics in social information processing.