J. Neurosci. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.5538-09.2010 (2010)

Giving people the hormone oxytocin enhances their socially reinforced learning and improves their capacity to emotionally empathize with others. The findings support the idea of using the hormone — known for stimulating uterine contraction during childbirth — to treat disorders such as schizophrenia.

René Hurlemann at the University of Bonn in Germany, Keith Kendrick at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, and their colleagues asked male volunteers to perform a learning task. A nasal squirt of oxytocin improved the volunteers' performance when their choices were reinforced by images of smiling or angry faces, but not when their cue was a red or green light. In an empathy test, those treated with the hormone also scored similarly to untreated women, who normally score higher than men on such tests. The authors suggest that the amygdala — a brain region linked to emotional learning — helps to mediate oxytocin's effects.