The hormone oxytocin has long been associated with social behaviors, but recent evidence suggests that it may also affect reward processing in non-social contexts. Decisions are an integral component of many social and reward-based behavioral paradigms. Thus, a broad role for oxytocin in decision-making may explain the wide variety of effects that have been previously observed and resolve controversies in the literature about its role. To determine if oxytocin can selectively modulate decision-making in male rats, we assessed the dose-dependent effects of central (intracerebroventricular) or peripheral (intraperitoneal) administration of oxytocin on probability and delay discounting, two commonly used decision-making tasks that are free of social contexts. Our results showed that central administration of oxytocin dose-dependently reduced preference for risky outcomes in the probability discounting task, but had no impact on delay discounting or reward sensitivity. This effect was blocked by the co-administration of an oxytocin antagonist. Additionally, we found no effect of peripheral oxytocin administration on any task. To identify potential cognitive mechanisms of central oxytocin's effect on decision-making, we determined if central or peripheral oxytocin affects reward sensitivity using an intracranial self-stimulation task, and motivation using a progressive ratio task. These results showed that at the dosage that affects decision-making, central oxytocin had a mild and short-lasting effect on motivation, but no observable effect on reward sensitivity. This pattern of results suggests that oxytocin may selectively reduce risky decisions in male rats, even at dosages that have no major effects on reward processing and motivation. These findings highlight a potentially novel role for oxytocin in non-social cognitive processes and expand our understanding of the mechanism by which oxytocin may regulate social behavior.

催产素激素长期以来一直与社交行为有关，但最近的证据表明，它也可能影响非社交环境下的奖励过程。决策是许多基于社交和奖励的行为范例不可或缺的组成部分。因此，催产素在决策中的广泛作用可能解释了以前观察到的多种作用，并解决了有关其作用的文献争议。为了确定催产素是否可以选择性地调节雄性大鼠的决策，我们评估了中央（脑室内）或外周（腹膜内）施用催产素对概率和延迟贴现的剂量依赖性作用，这两个免费的常用决策任务社会环境。我们的研究结果表明，催产素的中央给药可降低剂量折现任务中对风险结果的偏好，但对延迟折现或奖励敏感性没有影响。催产素拮抗剂的共同给药可阻断该作用。此外，我们发现外围催产素给药对任何任务均无影响。为了确定中央催产素对决策的影响的潜在认知机制，我们确定了中央催产素或外周催产素是使用颅内自我刺激任务影响奖励敏感性，还是使用渐进比率任务来影响动机。这些结果表明，在影响决策的剂量下，中央催产素对动机具有温和而持久的作用，但对奖赏敏感性没有明显的作用。这种结果模式表明，催产素可能选择性降低雄性大鼠的风险决定，即使其剂量对奖励过程和动机没有重大影响。这些发现凸显了催产素在非社会认知过程中的潜在新颖作用，并扩大了我们对催产素调节社会行为的机制的理解。