Oxytocin enhances processing of positive versus negative emotional information in healthy male volunteers

Abstract

Animal studies have shown the role of oxytocin in affiliation and attachment, and recent evidence suggests that oxytocin is also involved in human models of approach behaviour, possibly by modulating the processing of emotionally valenced stimuli. Although oxytocin administration has been reported to decrease neural responses to facial emotional information, the effects on a wider range of behavioural measures of emotional processing shown to be sensitive to antidepressant manipulation have not been examined. The aim of this study was to investigate whether intranasally administered oxytocin affects the processing of positive and negative affective information in healthy male volunteers across tasks measuring attention, perception and memory. Twenty-nine male healthy volunteers were randomly allocated to receive a single dose of oxytocin nasal spray (24 UI) or placebo. 50 min later, participants completed a battery of psychological tests measuring emotional processing. A single dose of intranasally administered oxytocin slowed reaction time to correctly identify fearful facial expressions and reduced the misclassification of positive emotions as negative ones. These effects occurred in the absence of significant differences in subjective ratings of mood and anxiety. These results suggest that oxytocin modulates emotion processing in healthy male volunteers. This action may contribute to the emerging role of the neuropeptide in promoting affiliative and approach behaviours by reducing the salience of potentially ambiguous and threatening social stimuli.

Oxytocin blunts social vigilance in the rhesus macaque

“…OT renders social decisions less responsive to the immediate social environment and more consistent with preexisting preferences (5,26). OT magnifies preexisting biases in emotion classification (27) and in-group/outgroup decision biases in economic games (7). In the macaque, OT also increases both prosocial and selfish choices in a reward allocation task, magnifying the preferences observed in the absence of OT (4).…”

“…In the macaque, OT also increases both prosocial and selfish choices in a reward allocation task, magnifying the preferences observed in the absence of OT (4). Moreover, OT slows response times for accurately identifying facial expressions (13,27) and for making social decisions in the presence of others (4). These results indicate that less information about the immediate social context may be available for decision processes following OT.…”

Effects of MDMA and Intranasal Oxytocin on Social and Emotional Processing

“…Single doses of intranasal oxytocin can also produce prosocial, anxiolytic, and affiliative effects in healthy adults (Bos et al, 2011;Lim and Young, 2006). For example, oxytocin has been shown to increase trust and generosity (Kosfeld et al, 2005;Zak et al, 2007), reduce responses to social stressors (Heinrichs et al, 2003), increase positive communication (Ditzen et al, 2009), and, like MDMA, enhance recognition of positive emotional states and dampen responses to negative emotions in others (Di Simplicio et al, 2009;Domes et al, 2007a,b;Marsh et al, 2010;Shahrestani et al, 2013). On the other hand, other studies have failed to detect prosocial effects of oxytocin, and indeed, found that it can produce antisocial effects such as feelings of envy and mistrust (Bartz et al, 2011a;Declerck et al, 2010;Shamay-Tsoory et al, 2009).…”

Validation of experimental medicine methods in psychiatry: The P1vital approach and experience

“…Pre Oxford Emotional Test Battery (ETB) for detecting potential antidepressant efficacy have been validated over a period of more than 10 years in studies with both positive controls [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] , and negative controls 36,37,38 in healthy volunteers and in patients with depression …”