Oxytocin reduces anger bias, harm-intention recognition, and self-focus in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial

Exploratory findings suggest that oxytocin reduces threat-bias, promotes social engagement, and decreases self-focused language, while no improvements were detected on experimental measures of social cognition. The results highlight the safety and potential of innovative oxytocin-based pharmacological interventions and the value of incorporating naturalistic assessments, such as ecological social interactions and language analysis, to optimize the detection of therapeutic effects in neurodegenerative diseases. Oxytocin may hold promise for enhancing social engagement in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, although its effects on language use and higher-order cognitive processes require further investigation.