The beneficial effect of oxytocin on avoidance-related facial emotion recognition depends on early life stress experience

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Given the role of OXT in modulating social motivational processes, the researchers specifically aimed to investigate its effects on the recognition of approach- and avoidance-related facial emotions.

Why It Was Studied

The effects of OXT administration strongly depend on the exposure to stressful experiences in early life.

Emotional facial recognition is crucial for social cognition.

Who Took Part

The study group was 82 participants.

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults and adults, men only.

In a double-blind, between-subjects, placebo-controlled design, 82 male participants performed an emotion recognition task with faces taken from the "Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces" set.

The researchers clustered the six basic emotions along the dimensions approach (happy, surprise, anger) and avoidance (fear, sadness, disgust).

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Oxytocin study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Oxytocin could be set against what happens without it.

ELS was assessed with the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ).

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Emotions, Facial Expression, Fear, Life Change Events, Oxytocin, Recognition, Psychology and Stress, Psychological.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 82 participants.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2014 (Psychopharmacology), a journal based in Germany.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.