Oxytocin attenuates neural reactivity to masked threat cues from the eyes
Open accessAbstract
The neuropeptide oxytocin has recently been shown to modulate covert attention shifts to emotional face cues and to improve discrimination of masked facial emotions. These results suggest that oxytocin modulates facial emotion processing at early perceptual stages prior to full evaluation of the emotional expression. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine whether oxytocin alters neural responses to backwardly masked angry and happy faces while controlling for attention to the eye vs the mouth region. Intranasal oxytocin administration reduced amygdala reactivity to masked emotions when attending to salient facial features, ie, the eyes of angry faces and the mouth of happy faces. In addition, oxytocin decreased neural responses within the fusiform gyrus and brain stem areas, as well as functional coupling between the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus specifically for threat cues from the eyes. Effects of oxytocin on brain activity were not attributable to differences in behavioral performance, as oxytocin had no impact on mere emotion detection. Our results suggest that oxytocin attenuates neural correlates of early arousal by threat signals from the eye region. As reduced threat sensitivity may increase the likelihood of engaging in social interactions, our findings may have important implications for clinical states of social anxiety.
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Other studies have reported similar results after administration of 24 IU, but dosages are difficult to compare between experiments as these studies used traditional nasal spray devices to administer OT.
“Of note, other studies have reported similar results after administration of 24 IU (Domes et al., 2007;Kanat et al., 2015;Labuschagne et al., 2010), however, the dosages are difficult to compare between experiments as these studies used traditional nasal spray devices to administer OT.”
From Low dose intranasal oxytocin delivered with Breath Powered device dampens amygdala response to emotional stimuli: A peripheral effect-controlled within-subjects randomized dose-response fMRI trial (2016) · cites this paper as Kanat et al., 2015
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- Authors
- Kanat, M., Heinrichs, M., Schwarzwald, R., & Domes, G.
- Affiliations
- University of Freiburg (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Domes, Gregor
- Venue
- Neuropsychopharmacology
- Published
- 2014-07-22
- Volume
- 40
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 287-295
- ISSN
- 0893-133X (ISSN-L)
- 1740-634X
- PMC
- PMC4443952
- OpenAlex
- W1971519986
- Cited by
- 77
- References
- 46
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 13.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Neuropsychopharmacology (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Bank (Australian Catholic University) (submittedVersion)
- FreiDok plus (Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (5310/1-1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Keywords
- oxytocin, emotional face processing, amygdala, fusiform gyrus, threat sensitivity, social anxiety, intranasal administration, neural coupling
- MeSH terms
- Facial Recognition, Administration, Intranasal, Adult, Attention, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cues, Eye, Facial Expression, Humans, Functional Laterality, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mouth, Neuropsychological Tests, Oxytocin, Photic Stimulation, Young Adult
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