Psychobiology Research Group, Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest, Hungary ; Department of Ethology, Eötvös University Budapest, Hungary.
Front Psychol. 2013 Aug 14;4:532. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00532. eCollection 2013.
Oxytocin has been shown to affect several aspects of human social cognition, including facial emotion processing. There is also evidence that social stimuli (such as eye-contact) can effectively modulate endogenous oxytocin levels. In the present study we directly tested whether intranasal oxytocin administration and pre-treatment with social stimuli had similar effects on face processing at the behavioral level. Subjects (N = 52 healthy adult males) were presented with a set of faces with expressions of different valence (negative, neutral, positive) following different types of pretreatment (oxytocin-OT or placebo-PL and social interaction-Soc or no social interaction-NSoc, N = 13 in each) and were asked to rate all faces for perceived emotion and trustworthiness. On the next day subjects' recognition memory was tested on a set of neutral faces and additionally they had to again rate each face for trustworthiness and emotion. Subjects in both the OT and the Soc pretreatment group (as compared to the PL and to the NSoc groups) gave higher emotion and trustworthiness scores for faces with negative emotional expression. Moreover, 24 h later, subjects in the OT and Soc groups (unlike in control groups) gave lower trustworthiness scores for previously negative faces, than for faces previously seen as emotionally neutral or positive. In sum these results provide the first direct evidence of the similar effects of intranasal oxytocin administration and social stimulation on the perception of negative facial emotions as well as on the delayed recall of negative emotional information.
催产素已被证明会影响人类社会认知的几个方面，包括面部情绪处理。也有证据表明，社会刺激（如眼神接触）可以有效地调节内源性催产素水平。在本研究中，我们直接测试了鼻内给予催产素和预先给予社会刺激是否对行为层面的面部处理有类似的影响。被试（N=52 名健康成年男性）在接受不同预处理（催产素-OX 或安慰剂-PL 和社会互动-Soc 或无社会互动-NSoc，每组 N=13）后，接受了一组不同效价（负性、中性、正性）的面部表情的呈现，并被要求对所有面部表情进行情绪和可信任度的评价。第二天，被试在一组中性面孔上进行识别记忆测试，并再次对每张面孔的可信任度和情绪进行评价。与 PL 和 Nsoc 组相比，OT 和 Soc 预处理组的被试对具有负性情绪表达的面孔给予更高的情绪和可信任度评分。此外，24 小时后，OT 和 Soc 组的被试（与对照组不同）对先前的负性面孔的可信任度评分低于对先前被视为情绪中性或正性的面孔。总之，这些结果首次直接证明了鼻内给予催产素和社会刺激对负面面部情绪的感知以及对负面情绪信息的延迟回忆有类似的影响。
