Investigating the differential effects of oxytocin on empathy deficits across patients with Frontotemporal Dementia
Abstract
Oxytocin (OXT) is a promising treatment candidate for improving empathy deficits in Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). However, given the heterogeneous nature of FTD, OXT may not exert therapeutic effects uniformly across the patient population. It was predicted that individual patterns of atrophy would predict variable behavioural responses to OXT, indexed by accuracy on a facial expression recognition task. Linear regression results indicated that structural volumes cannot predict treatment response, but age is a significant predictor, with younger patients showing greater expression recognition accuracy following treatment with OXT. Further, in a seed-based functional connectivity analysis, the insula demonstrated increased coupling with the cingulate gyrus and decreased coupling with the basal forebrain and occipital gyrus. For the amygdala seed region, widespread decoupling with occipitotemporal regions was observed. These findings provide evidence for differential age effects of OXT and OXT modulation of functional connectivity between brain regions supporting social cognition.