Intranasal oxytocin increases facial expressivity, but not ratings of trustworthiness, in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Blunted facial affect is a common negative symptom of schizophrenia.

Additionally, assessing the trustworthiness of faces is a social cognitive ability that is impaired in schizophrenia.

Who Took Part

The study group was 33 individuals.

PubMed indexes the participants as young adults, adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

The researchers investigated the effects of oxytocin on facial emotional expressivity while participants performed a facial trustworthiness rating task in 33 individuals with schizophrenia and 35 age-matched healthy controls using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design.

Participants rated the trustworthiness of presented faces interspersed with emotionally evocative photographs while being video-recorded.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

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

Neither the individuals nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Oxytocin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

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

In the crossover set-up each of the individuals took both Oxytocin and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

Participants' facial expressivity in these videos was quantified by blind raters using a well-validated manualized approach (i.e. the Facial Expression Coding System; FACES).

What Was Measured

Additionally, assessing the trustworthiness of faces is a social cognitive ability that is impaired in schizophrenia.

The subject headings attached to it are Facial Expression, Facial Recognition, Neuropeptides, Oxytocin, Schizophrenia, Social Perception and Trust.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Blunted affect, facial expressivity, social cognition and trustworthiness.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 33 individuals.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 2 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (Psychological medicine), a journal based in England.

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