Neuroticism modulates the effects of intranasal vasopressin treatment on the neural response to positive and negative social interactions

What Was Tested

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

Here the researchers ask how Neuroticism influences the neural response to positive and negative social interactions and how Neuroticism modulates the effect of intranasal oxytocin (OT) and vasopressin (AVP) on the neural response to social interactions.

Afterwards, they were imaged with fMRI while playing an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma Game.

Who Took Part

The study group was 153 participants.

The age groups tagged for this paper are teenagers and young adults, men only.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Oxytocin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

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

What Was Measured

On a different day, subjects completed the NEO personality inventory to measure Neuroticism.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Anxiety Disorders, Brain, Brain Mapping, Cerebrovascular Circulation, Emotions, Interpersonal Relations and Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Cooperation, Neuroticism, Oxytocin, Vasopressin and fMRI.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin and Vasopressin in 153 participants.

The publication is from 2015 (Neuropsychologia), a journal based in England.

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