Preference for novel faces in male infant monkeys predicts cerebrospinal fluid oxytocin concentrations later in life

Abstract

The ability to recognize individuals is a critical skill acquired early in life for group living species. In primates, individual recognition occurs predominantly through face discrimination. Despite the essential adaptive value of this ability, robust individual differences in conspecific face recognition exist, yet its associated biology remains unknown. Although pharmacological administration of oxytocin has implicated this neuropeptide in face perception and social memory, no prior research has tested the relationship between individual differences in face recognition and endogenous oxytocin concentrations. Here we show in a male rhesus monkey cohort (N = 60) that infant performance in a task used to determine face recognition ability (specifically, the ability of animals to show a preference for a novel face) robustly predicts cerebrospinal fluid, but not blood, oxytocin concentrations up to five years after behavioural assessment. These results argue that central oxytocin biology may be related to individual face perceptual abilities necessary for group living, and that these differences are stable traits.

Bridging the gap between rodents and humans: The role of non‐human primates in oxytocin research

“…The relationship between the number of reciprocal friendships and plasma OT was best described by a U-shaped quadratic function (middle- and high-ranking juveniles with either low or high numbers of reciprocal friendships had higher OT levels) (Weinstein et al, 2014). Recently Madrid et al (2017) showed that the preference for novel faces of infant rhesus monkeys predicted the concentration of OT in the CSF. The ability to recognize others is an essential social behavior in primates (Gothard & Hoffman, 2009; Leonard, Blumenthal, Gothard, & Hoffman, 2012), and deficits in facial processing are early predictors of social deficits later in life (Sclafani et al, 2016).…”

An integrated framework for the role of oxytocin in multistage social decision‐making

“…However, other studies in humans using attentional capture techniques do strongly suggest the modulation of early perceptual processing by OT [Ellenbogen et al, 2012], and similar studies in monkeys have also indicated the effects of OT in perceptual processing, although these studies generally find that OT diminishes the salience of distracting social stimuli in these distractor-based paradigms [Ebitz et al, 2013; Landman et al, 2014]. A recent study further indicated that facial recognition ability in male infant macaques correlates with OT levels in cerebrospinal fluid later in life [Madrid et al, 2017].…”

Behavioral effects of postnatal ketamine exposure in rhesus macaque infants are dependent on MAOA‐LPR genotype

“…A 100‐Hz tone was presented 250 milliseconds prior to test trials in order to orient the animal's gaze. All video stimuli were photographs of novel rhesus macaque monkeys and can be found as Supplementary Material to Madrid et al (). The principal outcome measure was the proportion of looking time spent viewing the novel pictures, which was calculated by taking the duration that the animals looked at the novel stimuli for the two test trials for each problem, and dividing by the duration of time animals looked at either the novel or familiar stimuli.…”