r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Feb 08 '25

Neuroscience Specific neurons that secrete oxytocin in the brain are disrupted in a mouse model of autism, neuroscientists have found. Stimulating these neurons restored social behaviors in these mice. These findings could help to develop new ways to treat autism.

https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250207_1/index.html
6.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

367 comments sorted by

View all comments

822

u/WickedClutz2 Feb 08 '25

This might explain why the most recent times I've felt emotionally "normal" were when I took psilocybin and the first couple of weeks after my daughter were born. Both times felt like something was chemically making me feel more and I started looking into it. Found out that psilo and hexadecanal (newborn baby pheromone) both induce oxytocin. Typically, I don't have strong emotional reactions even in intense situations. Those are literally the only two times I've ever happy cried in my entire life. I never understood that reaction before. My wedding day was great but I never felt the urge. I think for me, it's a chemical thing.

430

u/VampireFrown Feb 09 '25

It's a common misconception that autism somehow means you feel less.

It's certainly possible, and is present in some autistic people, but it's certainly not characteristic of it.

I'm autistic (diagnosed), and I feel very intense emotions of all flavour. If anything, sometimes too intense. And, from rather extensive research and an unusually large autistic social network in real life, that actually looks to be the norm.

274

u/LittleEggThings Feb 09 '25

For my wife who has autism, she describes it as a delayed processing of her feelings. She knows she feels something, but has a really hard time describing what she’s feeling even if the feeling is intense.

For example, if someone says something that upsets her, it can feel really off for a while and it can be anywhere from an hour to days afterwards that it just hits and she realizes she was angry at the time because the person said xyz.

34

u/ParentPostLacksWang Feb 09 '25

That sounds like Alexithymia. Common in autism, yup, I find it quite difficult to deal with, especially in the context of therapy. The question “how do you feel?” is absolutely crushingly difficult to answer, because overwhelmingly my answer is going to be how I physically feel, the physical symptoms of my emotional state will be in there somewhere.

6

u/shouldbepracticing85 Feb 09 '25

Wow, that seems so much like me. So many times I’d know I was feeling stressed/strung out, but clueless to the fact my body was having a panic attack until I’d hit the “dunked in ice water” feeling. Then I’d figure it out and go take my clonapen to put the brakes on the panic.