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Completed Not applicable Interventional Accepts healthy volunteers Results available

Neurobiological Bases of Paternal Nurturance

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02223429

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02223429. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 10, 2026, 5:51 AM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Official title

Biological Bases of Individual Variation in Paternal Nurturance

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

The overall goal of this project is to identify the genetic, hormonal, and neurobiological influences on paternal nurturing behavior and to determine if fathers' neural responses to infants can be modulated by neuropeptides known to play a role in parenting in experimental animal models. The aim is to determine if pharmacological manipulation of central oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) levels influences the neural response to viewing pictures of one's own infant or to hearing cry stimuli. In a double-blind procedure, fathers with 1-3 year old children will be scanned on two separate occasions; once under the influence of OT/AVP and once under the influence of placebo. Fathers will be randomized to either OT or AVP, and order of administration of drug and placebo will counterbalanced across subjects. Fathers will be scanned while viewing pictures of their own and an unknown child and while listening to unknown infant cry stimuli. The investigators hypothesize: * OT will augment the ventral tegmental area (VTA), ventral striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) response to viewing pictures of one's own child, and will augment the primary auditory cortex (AI) response of fathers to infant cries. * AVP will augment the lateral septum response to viewing own child pictures.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT02223429
Recruitment status
Completed
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Not applicable
Lead sponsor
James K. Rilling, PhD
Other
Enrollment
35 participants

Conditions and interventions

Conditions

Interventions

Drug

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
18 Years and older
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Accepts healthy volunteers

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Jul 31, 2014
Primary completion
Jan 31, 2016
Completion
Jan 31, 2016
Last update posted
Jun 4, 2017

2014 – 2016

United States locations

U.S. sites
2
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
Emory University Hospital Atlanta Georgia 30307
Emory University 1462 Clifton Rd Atlanta Georgia 30322

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02223429, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Jun 4, 2017 · Synced Sep 10, 2026

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The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02223429 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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