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Oxytocin (OT), N 42; Placebo (PL), N 40. p .01, p .001. All data in this graph represent participant performance when rating emotions on the faces task of the MSCEIT collapsed across all items. Error bars represent the 95% confidence interval. Positive Cohen d statistics reflect higher ratings of intensity for the oxytocin administration group relative to placebo. Participants rated all emotions with more intensity in the oxytocin condition relative to placebo, particularly for ratings of surprise and disgust. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
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Evidence suggests that intranasal oxytocin enhances the perception of emotion in facial expressions during standard emotion identification tasks. However, it is not clear whether this effect is desirable in people who do not show deficits in emotion perception. That is, a heightened perception of emotion in faces could lead to “oversensitivity” to...
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... order to determine the direction of the effects described above (as mentioned previously, rating an emotion too high or too low could result in lower accuracy based on agreement with a norma- tive sample), we explored the raw intensity ratings that the partic- ipants in this study endorsed (see Figure 2). Our results show that participants rated all facial expression with more intensity relative to ratings following the administration of placebo, particularly when rating surprise and ...
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Background: Social cognition may be critical to the impoverished social functioning seen in serious mental illness. However, although social-cognitive deficits are consistently demonstrated in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), studies in bipolar disorder (BD) have produced inconsistent results. This inconsistency may relate to symptom profile...
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... The mechanism through which OT facilitates this is still revealing itself. OT appears to increase the salience of social stimuli (Averbeck, 2010;Bartz et al., 2011;Cardoso et al., 2014), potentially by reducing its perceived ambiguity (Zheng et al., 2021). Greater amygdala activation is proposed to determine the ambiguity, intent and threat value of emotional faces (Morris et al., 1998;Davis and Whalen, 2001), and the reduction of this activity after OT may reflect a reduction of perceived ambiguity and the related attentional resources required to assess subtle cues when judging valence (Domes et al., 2007). ...
Oxytocin (OT) alters social cognition partly through effects on the processing and appraisal of faces. It is debated whether the hormone also impacts the processing of other, non-social, visual stimuli. To this end, we conducted a randomized, counter-balanced, double-blind, placebo (PL)-controlled within-subjects’ electro-encephalography (EEG) study with cismale participants (to control for gender dimorphic hormonal effects; n = 37). Participants received intranasal OT (24IU) and completed a one-back task viewing emotional (fearful/ happy) and neutral faces, and threat (snakes/spiders) and non-threat (mushrooms/flowers) non-social stimuli. OT differentially impacted event-related potentials (ERP)s to faces and non-social stimuli. For faces regardless of emotion, OT evoked greater occipital N1 and anterior P1 amplitudes at ∼155 ms than after PL, and lead to sustained differences over anterior, bilateral parietal and occipital sites from 205 ms onwards. For all non-social stimuli, OT evoked greater right parietal N1 amplitudes, and later only impacted threat stimuli over right parietal and occipital sites. None of these OT-induced modulations was related to individual anxiety levels. This pattern of results indicates that OT differentially modulates the processing of faces and non-social stimuli, and that the hormone’s effect on visual processing and cognition does not occur as a function of non-clinical levels of anxiety.
... Other researchers suggest that the salience network may contribute to EI (Bajaj and Killgore, 2021;Cardoso et al., 2014). The salience network is generally regarded as responsible for representing and activating internal and external cues based on their emotional relevance so as to maintain homeostasis (Seeley, 2019;Seeley et al., 2007). ...
... Research assessing neural activity in healthy controls lends support to the idea that activity in the salience network might also underlie MSCEIT scores (Alkozei and Killgore, 2015;Bajaj and Killgore, 2021;Cardoso et al., 2014;Killgore, 2013;Killgore et al., 2013). Individuals who score poorly in the MSCEIT have altered functional connectivity in the salience network when measured at rest (Bajaj and Killgore, 2021;Sawaya et al., 2015). ...
... However, an increasing number of studies indicates there may be an optimal level of social sensitivity. Experimental studies showed that intranasal OT injection resulted in overrating of emotion in faces in healthy women [36,37], men with low autism spectrum traits [37] and extraverted or prosocial characteristics [38]. In relation to parent-child relationship, a cross-sectional study of 50 healthy mothers found that lower levels of OT was associated with greater provision of autonomy support towards their toddlers [39]. ...
While wilderness programs are recognized as a feasible intervention to promote psychological independence in adolescence, little is known about physiological changes. The present study focused on oxytocin, a key hormone for social cognition and behavior, and investigated changes in OT concentrations during a wilderness program among adolescents. Twenty-one 4th–7th graders were separated from parents and immersed with adventures and challenges in the woodlands of Motegi, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan for 31 days, and dataset of 20 boys aged 9–13 years-old were used for analysis. OT concentrations in early morning saliva samples on days 2, 5, 8, 13, 18, 20, 21, 22 and 30 were determined using ELIZA. We performed multi-level regression analyses to compare the OT concentrations before and after solo and team-based survival challenges, and across the nine observational points, adjusting for potential covariates. We found that adolescents increased OT level in a situation where they needed others’ cooperation and support for survival (coefficient: 2.86, SE: 1.34, p = 0.033). Further, we found that adolescents gradually decreased their basal OT level during a long separation from parents (coefficient: −0.083, SE: 0.034, p = 0.016). A combination of these findings suggest the OT level may be a marker for psychological independence.
... All of the studies included intranasal administration of oxytocin (Table 1). Of all the studies included, only 18% reported a significant main effect of hormone administration on emotional facial processing [27,30,38,56,[60][61][69][70][71]73,75,87,93]. Furthermore, the percentage of manuscripts that reached significance after including additional variables (e.g., emotional valence, gender, age, among others) combined with oxytocin (drug) administration was approximately 54% (table 2). ...
... Focusing on the healthy population, after hormone administration, results indicated that participants in the hormone/drug group showed higher accuracy in recognizing emotional faces, regardless of the emotional valence [30,38,56,60,61,70,73,75,87], but Cardoso et al. [27] found that oxytocin reduces accuracy. Moreover, this effect was more pronounced in men than in women, particularly in older men [26]. ...
... Therefore, it is important to consider not only the level of difficulty, but also the age of the participants. [26] Ns ------Hormone x Gender x Age (p = 0.014) np 2 = 0.05 Cardoso et al., [27] Significant [29] Ns [33] Ns [34] Ns [39] Ns ...
Simple Summary
The scientific community has paid special attention to facial emotional expression due to its importance in human surveillance as a communication tool. Humans need decoding abilities to understand the meaning of facial expressions and act accordingly. This ability is partly regulated by biochemical signals such as hormones, and it is of growing interest in understanding the role played by specific hormones such as oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone. To date, there is a gap in the scientific literature summarizing how the manipulation of endogenous levels of oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone through the exogenous administration of these hormones affects the processing of facial emotional expressions during adulthood in healthy and clinical populations of both genders. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review to summarize the evidence about how these three hormones influence facial emotional processing, paying special attention to studies that employed robust research designs (e.g., randomized, single- or double-blind, and/or placebo-controlled). The results obtained did not present a consistent pattern of association between the variables. In any case, these hormones slightly influenced facial emotion processing, but it is obviously extremely difficult to establish a direct association. To correctly understand the hormones’ influence, it is necessary to consider other factors such as the emotional valence and the participants’ gender, among others, which played an important role.
Abstract
A topic of interest is the way decoding and interpreting facial emotional expressions can lead to mutual understanding. Facial emotional expression is a basic source of information that guarantees the functioning of other higher cognitive processes (e.g., empathy, cooperativity, prosociality, or decision-making, among others). In this regard, hormones such as oxytocin, cortisol, and/or testosterone have been found to be important in modifying facial emotion processing. In fact, brain structures that participate in facial emotion processing have been shown to be rich in receptors for these hormones. Nonetheless, much of this research has been based on correlational designs. In recent years, a growing number of researchers have tried to carry out controlled laboratory manipulation of these hormones by administering synthetic forms of these hormones. The main objective of this study was to carry out a systematic review of studies that assess whether manipulation of these three hormones effectively promotes significant alterations in facial emotional processing. To carry out this review, PRISMA quality criteria for reviews were followed, using the following digital databases: PsycINFO, PubMed, Dialnet, Psicodoc, Web of Knowledge, and the Cochrane Library, and focusing on manuscripts with a robust research design (e.g., randomized, single- or double-blind, and/or placebo-controlled) to increase the value of this systematic review. An initial identification of 6340 abstracts and retrieval of 910 full texts led to the final inclusion of 101 papers that met all the inclusion criteria. Only about 18% of the manuscripts included reported a direct effect of hormone manipulation. In fact, emotional accuracy seemed to be enhanced after oxytocin increases, but it diminished when cortisol and/or testosterone increased. Nonetheless, when emotional valence and participants’ gender were included, hormonal manipulation reached significance (in around 53% of the articles). In fact, these studies offered a heterogeneous pattern in the way these hormones altered speed processing, attention, and memory. This study reinforces the idea that these hormones are important, but not the main modulators of facial emotion processing. As our comprehension of hormonal effects on emotional processing improves, the potential to design good treatments to improve this ability will be greater.
... Participants receiving intranasal OT rated facial emotions as more intense than those receiving PLC. This effect was associated with a decrease in accuracy (Cardoso et al., 2014). By contrast, Bartz et al. (2019) found that intranasal OT improves empathic accuracy of participants who rated the valence of feelings of persons discussing emotional autobiographic events. ...
The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been associated with a broad range of human behaviors, particularly in the domain of social cognition, and is being discussed to play a role in a range of psychiatric disorders. Studies using the Reading The Mind In The Eyes Test (RMET) to investigate the role of OT in mental state recognition reported inconsistent outcomes. The present study applied a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design, and included measures of serum OT. Twenty healthy males received intranasal placebo or OT (24 IU) before performing the RMET. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses showed that contrary to previous studies (Domes et al., 2007; Radke & de Bruijn, 2015), individuals performed worse in the OT condition compared to the placebo condition ( p = 0.023, Cohen’s d = 0.55, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.08, 1.02], BF 10 = 6.93). OT effects did not depend on item characteristics (difficulty, valence, intensity, sex) of the RMET. Furthermore, OT serum levels did not change after intranasal OT administration. Given that similar study designs lead to heterogeneous outcomes, our results highlight the complexity of OT effects and support evidence that OT might even interfere with social cognitive abilities. However, the Bayesian analysis approach shows that there is only moderate evidence that OT influences mind-reading, highlighting the need for larger-scale studies considering the discussed aspects that might have led to divergent study results.
... In 2014, researchers published findings in the journal Emotion (Cardoso et al., 2014) suggesting accurate identification of emotion in faces, based on agreement with a normative sample, was impaired in the intranasal OXT group relative to placebo. No such effect was observed for tests using nonsocial stimuli. ...
... Withdrawal from estradiol's serotonergic , anti-inflammatory (Vegeto et al., 2008), or neuroprotective (Chowen et al., 1992, Woolley, 1998 effects may help explain how estradiol withdrawal may trigger depressive mood in a subset of women. Conversely, negative mood effects of extremely high estradiol levels may relate to estradiol's modulation of oxytocin binding (Young et al., 1998) and release (Chiodera et al., 1991, Engel et al., 2019, Wang et al., 1995 as oxytocin has been demonstrated to increase the perceived intensity of emotions in others (Cardoso et al., 2014), which may heighten one's vulnerability to depression. Increased sensitivity to fluctuation in GABAergic neurosteroids, such as allopregnanolone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) have also been hypothesized to potentially underlie mood sensitivity to estradiol fluctuation in either direction (Gordon et al., 2015b). ...
Background: The risk for depression markedly rises during the 5–6 years leading up to the cessation of menstruation, known as the menopause transition. Exposure to extreme estradiol levels may help explain this increase but few studies have examined individual sensitivity to estradiol in predicting perimenopausal depression.
Method: The current study recruited 101 perimenopausal women. During Phase 1, we quantified each woman's sensitivity to changes in estradiol using 12 weekly measures of estrone-3-glucuronide (E1G), a urinary metabolite of estradiol, and concurrent depressive symptoms. The weekly cortisol awakening response was measured to examine the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in mediating mood sensitivity to estradiol. In Phase 2, depressive symptoms and major depression diagnoses were assessed monthly for 9 months. The relationship between Phase 1 E1G sensitivity and Phase 2 depressive symptoms and major depressive episodes was examined. Several baseline characteristics were examined as potential moderators of this relationship.
Results: The within-person correlation between weekly E1G and mood varied greatly from woman to woman, both in strength and direction. Phase 1 E1G mood sensitivity predicted the occurrence of clinically significant depressive symptoms in Phase 2 among certain subsets of women: those without a prior history of depression, reporting a low number of baseline stressful life events, and reporting fewer months since their last menstrual period. HPA axis sensitivity to estradiol fluctuation did not predict Phase 2 outcomes.
Conclusion: Mood sensitivity to estradiol predicts risk for perimenopausal depression, particularly among women who are otherwise at low risk and among those who are early in the transition.
... Basal cortisol also seems to correlate with cognitive control (Schutter and Van Honk, 2005). Few studies have took testosterone, cortisol and cognitive control processings as mechanisms underlying emotional intelligence, although there were some studies concerning other hormones and emotional perception in the context of emotional intelligence (Cardoso et al., 2014;Koven and Max, 2014;Milivojevic et al., 2014;do Vale et al., 2015). It is possible that the ratios of the basal levels of testosterone and cortisol are closely related to emotion regulation (Van Honk and Schutter, 2006). ...
Emotional intelligence is an important factor contributing to social adaptation. The current study investigated how salivary testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) levels, cognitive control of emotional conflict processing were associated with children’s emotional intelligence (EI). Thirty-four 10- to 11-year-old children were enrolled and instructed to complete questionnaires on emotional intelligence as well as empirical tasks of emotional flanker and Stroop with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Saliva collection took place on another day without ERP tasks. Results showed that lower T and C levels were associated with higher accuracy in emotional conflict tasks, as well as better emotional intelligence (managing self emotions). In the Stroop task, higher T/C ratios were associated with greater congruency effects of N2 latencies, and lower cortisol levels correlated with stronger slow potential activities (SP). For girls, the correlation between cortisol and emotional utilization was mediated by the SP amplitudes on fearful conflicts in the flanker task (95% CI: −8.64, −0.54, p < 0.050). In conclusion, the current study found the relationship between cortisol and an emotional intelligence ability, emotional utilization, might be mediated by brain activities during emotional conflict resolution processing (SP responses) in preadolescent girls. Future studies could further investigate testosterone-cortisol interaction and its relation with cognitive control of emotion as underlying mechanisms of emotional intelligence.
... Thirteen studies looked at the effect of OT on empathy (29,30,(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42). Empathy was assessed using a variety of tasks. ...
... Participants treated with OT rated the emotion in facial stimuli with greater intensity than those treated with placebo. However, accuracy of emotion identification in faces was impaired in the OT group relative to placebo for all emotions (41). ...
... However, there are some potential areas of concerns regarding the use of OT in ASPD based on the limited literature described here. For example, one study found that OT worsened the accuracy of interpreting emotions (41). In the ASPD population, which is known to lack empathy as well as impulse control, such an effect would be counterproductive and potentially risky. ...
Background and aims: Antisocial personality disorder is an enduring mental disorder associated with significant disease burden and treatment difficulties. This is apparent within forensic populations. There is growing evidence to suggest that treatment with oxytocin could have some benefit in treating a range of psychiatric disorders. There are no reviews studying the use of oxytocin for patients with ASPD. We aim to present the first literature review on the use of oxytocin in patients with ASPD.
Method: We searched relevant databases for original research on effect of oxytocin upon persons with a diagnosis of ASPD or healthy participants with symptoms seen in ASPD. Studies were included if they included healthy participants that evaluated the effect of oxytocin on symptoms relevant to ASPD, including empathy, inhibitory control, compliance, conformity, aggression, violence, and moral responsibility.
Results: Thirty-six studies were included. There were a range of study designs, including randomized controlled trials, double blinded, single blinded, and unblinded controlled trials. The sample sizes in studies ranged from 20 to 259 participants. Studies looked at participants with a diagnosis of ASPD and participants with symptoms relevant to ASPD, including empathy, inhibitory control, compliance, conformity, aggression, violence, and moral responsibility. Oxytocin was found to demonstrate diversified effects, in most cases being associated with socially positive or non-criminogenic behaviors. However, some studies found opposite, and non-desirable, effects, e.g., an increase in violent inclinations to partners. The two studies looking at participants with ASPD had a number of limitations and had conflicting results on the impact that OT has on aggression in ASPD.
Conclusions: This is the first systematic literature review exploring the potential use of oxytocin in managing ASPD and the symptoms of ASPD. It is apparent that there is a body of evidence addressing related symptoms in healthy individuals. There were diversified effects with oxytocin showing some benefits in promoting positive effects on symptoms of ASPD, but there were also studies showing non-desirable effects. It is difficult to draw any direct inferences from healthy control studies. Further high quality large sample studies are required to explore the effects of oxytocin in those with ASPD
... The strongest effects of intranasal OXT on amygdala activation have been observed 45 min after nasal spray administration, but amygdala inhibition has been evident up to a latency of 95 min (Spengler et al., 2017). In fact, a previous study even detected effects of intranasal OXT on emotion intensity ratings after 120 min (Cardoso et al., 2014). ...
Most people have a clear sense of body ownership, preserving them from physical harm. However, perceptual body illusions - famously the rubber hand illusion (RHI) - can be elicited experimentally in healthy individuals. We hypothesize that the amygdala, a core component of neural circuits of threat processing, is involved in protective mechanisms against disturbed body perceptions. To test this hypothesis, we started by investigating two monozygotic human twin sisters with focal bilateral amygdala damage due to Urbach-Wiethe disease. Relative to 20 healthy women, the twins exhibited, on two occasions 1 year apart, augmented RHI responses in form of faster illusion onset and increased vividness ratings. Following up on these findings, we conducted a volumetric brain morphometry study involving an independent, gender-mixed sample of 57 healthy human volunteers (36 female, 21 male). Our results revealed a positive correlation between amygdala volume and RHI onset, i.e., the smaller the amygdala, the less time it took the RHI to emerge. This raised the question of whether a similar phenotype would result from experimental amygdala inhibition. To dampen amygdala reactivity, we intranasally administered the peptide hormone oxytocin to the same 57 individuals in a randomized trial before conducting the RHI. Compared with placebo, oxytocin treatment yielded enhanced RHI responses, again evident in accelerated illusion onset and increased vividness ratings. Together, the present series of experiments provides converging evidence for the amygdala's unprecedented role in reducing susceptibility to the RHI, thus protecting the organism from the potentially fatal threats of a distorted bodily self.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Compelling evidence indicates that the amygdala is of vital importance for danger detection and fear processing. However, lethal threats can arise not only from menacing external stimuli but also from distortions in bodily self-perception. Intriguingly, the amygdala's modulatory role in such illusory body perceptions is still elusive. To probe the amygdala's involvement in illusory body experiences, we conducted a multi-methodological series of experiments in a rare human amygdala lesion model, complemented by a morphological and pharmaco-modulatory experiment in healthy volunteers. Our findings convergently suggest that the amygdala's integrity is indispensable for maintaining an unbiased, precise perception of our bodily self. Hence, the amygdala might shield us against distortions in self-perception and the resultant loss of behavioral control of our organism.
