Oxytocin facilitates reciprocity in social communication

Abstract

Synchrony in social groups may confer significant evolutionary advantages by improving group cohesion and social interaction. However, the neurobiological mechanisms translating social synchrony into refined social information transmission between interacting individuals are still elusive. In two successively conducted experiments involving a total of 306 healthy volunteers, we explored the involvement of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) in reciprocal social interaction. First, we show that synchronous social interactions evoke heightened endogenous OXT release in dyadic partners. In a second step, we examined the consequences of elevated OXT concentrations on emotion transmission by intranasally administering synthetic OXT before recording emotional expressions. Intriguingly, our data demonstrate that the subjects’ facial and vocal expressiveness of fear and happiness is enhanced after OXT compared with placebo administration. Collectively, our findings point to a central role of social synchrony in facilitating reciprocal communication between individuals via heightened OXT signaling. Elevated OXT concentrations among synchronized individuals seem to augment the partners’ emotional expressiveness, thereby contributing to improved transmission of emotional information in social communication.

Trauma Disclosure Moderates the Effects of Oxytocin on Intrusions and Neural Responses to Fear

“…Our finding of differential OXT effects depending on trauma disclosure patterns supports current views that OXT enhances the salience of social signals [8] and that context factors determine the outcome of OXT treatment protocols [4]. Specifically, OXT mediates the stress-buffering effects of social support [7], but it also exacerbates subjective feelings of psychosocial stress if social support is not available [9].…”

Oxytocin and vasopressin flatten dominance hierarchy and enhance behavioral synchrony in part via anterior cingulate cortex

“…Recent social neuroscientific studies have linked behavioral and neural synchrony to stronger social bonds 78 – 81 , and nonapeptide signaling may contribute to such social synchrony 82 – 84 . To address this possibility, we examined the temporal correlation of behaviors within pairs of monkeys following saline or OT delivery.…”

Exploring nonverbal synchrony in borderline personality disorder: A double‐blind placebo‐controlled study using oxytocin

“…Another study pointed out that there is a considerable overlap in brain regions for ‘being imitated’ and endogenous oxytocin secretion as well as regions active when OT is applied intranasally (Aoki et al , ; Aoki & Yamasue, ; Delaveau, Arzounian, Rotgé, Nadel, & Fossati, ). The association between different forms of synchrony and OT has previously been studied in standardized movements (finger‐tapping: Gebauer et al , ; hand gestures and emotion expression: Spengler et al , ) and in laboratory tasks (inter‐brain synchrony: Mu, Guo, & Han, ). Positive associations between either the level of OT or administration of inOT and synchrony were reported in these studies.…”