OXT and autism: Finally, in the context of increasing interest in the therapeutic application of OXT as a potential treatment to improve social cognitive deficits, including empathy, in autism spectrum disorders (Young and Barrett, 2015), and in line with previous studies in healthy subjects (Bartz et al., 2010; Scheele et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2015), the modulatory role of trait autism (assessed by the Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire, ASQ, Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) was explored.