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Oxytocin facilitates reciprocity in social communication
Open accessAbstract
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.
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Social synchrony, the temporal coordination of social behavior and physiological processes among individuals, evokes heightened endogenous oxytocin release, which predicts interactive reciprocity.
“We have previously found that social synchrony, that is the temporal coordination of social behavior and physiological processes among individuals, evokes heightened endogenous oxytocin release, which predicts interactive reciprocity[ 48 ]”
From Loneliness and the Social Brain: How Perceived Social Isolation Impairs Human Interactions (2021) · cites this paper as [48]
The Introduction (page unavailable) defines social synchrony as temporal concordance of behavioral and physiological processes. Experiment 1 (Methods and results; page unavailable) reports increased endogenous oxytocin after synchronous, but not asynchronous, interaction. The Discussion links heightened oxytocin signaling to reciprocal communication, but the paper does not show that the measured endogenous release predicts interactive reciprocity. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Loneliness and the Social Brain: How Perceived Social Isolation Impairs Human Interactions
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Metadata
- Authors
- Spengler, F. B., Scheele, D., Marsh, N., Kofferath, C., Flach, A., Schwarz, S., Stoffel-Wagner, B., Maier, W., & Hurlemann, R.
- Affiliations
- University of Bonn (DE)
- Department of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, University of Bonn, 53105 Bonn, Germany,
- Corresponding author
- Hurlemann, René
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2017-04-21
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1325-1333
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC5597889
- OpenAlex
- W2605574687
- Cited by
- 83
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 14 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 2.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- FreiDok plus (Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg) (submittedVersion)
- DZNE Pub (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- German Research Foundation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- DFG (HU1202/4-1, BE 5465/2-1)
- German National Academic Foundation
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Endocrine and Autonomic Systems › Neuroendocrine regulation and behavior
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- oxytocin, social synchrony, reciprocity, social communication, emotional expression, facial expressions, vocal expressiveness, emotion transmission, dyadic interaction, neuropeptide release, group cohesion
- MeSH terms
- Administration, Intranasal, Adult, Emotions, Facial Expression, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Oxytocin, Verbal Behavior, Young Adult
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