Boosting oxytocin after trauma: Effects of oxytocin on fear neurocircuitry in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder

Saskia Koch

About 10 percent of trauma-exposed individuals develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since a substantial part of PTSD patients does not fully benefit from existing psychotherapies, new interventions boosting treatment response in PTSD are highly needed. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been suggested as promising pharmacological agent to enhance treatment response in PTSD, because of its anxiolytic and pro-social properties. As a first step to explore the clinical potential of oxytocin in PTSD, the effects oxytocin administration on fear neurocircuitry were investigated in male and female police officers with and without PTSD. Saskia B.J. Koch (1986) has a research master degree in Cognitive Neuroscience and did her PhD project at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) in Amsterdam. She is currently working as postdoctoral researcher at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen.

https://graphik-buro.nl/epub/saskiakoch/