The role of oxytocin receptors in social conditioned place preference.

Investigating the neural mechanisms underlying social reward is important not only to further current understanding of adaptive social behaviors, but also for informing potential therapeutic strategies for disorders associated with impaired social functioning. A growing body of literature indicates that the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) plays a modulatory role in dynamic social behaviors and may influence reward processing to initiate and maintain them. The present study aimed to assess the reinforcing effects of social interaction in rats using a social conditioned place preference paradigm, in which male rats displayed social preference behavior. To investigate OXT's possible contribution in mediating this observed effect, a short-hairpin RNA (shRNA) was employed to selectively knockdown OXT receptors (OXTRs) within three reward-related brain structures: the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens (NAc), or lateral septum (LS). Rats with region-specific OXTR knockdown failed to establish socially-conditioned place preference, suggesting OXTRs within the VTA, NAc, and LS are independently needed to drive the reinforcing effect of social interaction.