Effect of Intranasal Neuropeptide on Emotion Perception in Trait Anxiety
Condition: Social Intelligence
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The purpose of this study is to learn more about how emotional processing may be affected by
      a hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that occurs naturally in the body, and may
      play an important role in the way that the brain perceives information.
    

Detailed description: 
      Extensive research has been conducted to examine cognitive styles in anxiety disorders that
      may contribute to the psychopathology of these disorders. One of the most consistent findings
      has been that anxious subjects attend preferentially to threatening stimuli. This attentional
      bias, which would increase time spent attending to and processing threatening stimuli such as
      words, sentences, or faces, is thought to help provoke and maintain anxiety states. This is
      supported by research that demonstrates that reduction in anxiety symptoms is associated with
      a decrease in attentional bias. Related to an attentional bias is the concept of a perceptual
      bias, from which people with anxiety disorders may be more perceptive to negative emotional
      cues. For example, Duncan and Barrett (2007) found a negative correlation between objective
      awareness of quickly presented faces depicting fear and extraversion. Participants who
      reported greater extraversion (i.e., pleasure derived from social interactions) were less
      likely to see 16 ms presentations of faces depicting fear. Thus, it appears that how someone
      feels is related to and may influence the information they see in their environment. The
      investigators thus hypothesize that the presence of chronic anxiety disorders may be linked
      to perceptual biases, and may actually influence how and what information they perceive
      (their sensory experience). People with anxiety disorders may be less likely to see positive
      objects and more likely to see negative objects. Although the neurobiological mechanisms
      underlying these anxiety disorders remain uncertain, one hypothesis implicates the
      dysregulation of the neuropeptide oxytocin.

      Oxytocin is a nine-amino-acid peptide which has a role in maintaining social behavior, and it
      has been found to decrease anxiety. Researchers have postulated that the anti-anxiety affects
      of oxytocin are related to the trust and pro-approach behaviors associated with this peptide.
      For example, mice treated with oxytocin spend more time in the previously avoided open areas
      of a maze. In a study in humans using healthy volunteers, participants were administered
      oxytocin or placebo before they played a game with monetary rewards involving trust with a
      stranger. Those who received oxytocin transferred higher amounts of money to the other player
      than those who received placebo. This behavior, involving increased comfort with a novel
      individual or setting, appears to be related to the effects of oxytocin.

      As described above, individuals with high levels of anxiety have a perception bias towards
      emotional stimuli, such as pictures of faces. Oxytocin's anxiolytic, pro-approach and trust
      effects may decrease this bias, and may cause an individual to experience people or things in
      the environment as less threatening.
    

Intervention name(s): Oxytocin; Placebo
Intervention type(s): Drug; Drug
Intervention description(s): Liquid metered-dose nasal spray, 30 IUs, administered once.; Matched nasal spray placebo
Other intervention name(s): Syntocinon
Intervention MeSH terms: Oxytocin
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Investigator)
Primary purpose: Basic Science