Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin on the Interpretation and Expression of Emotions in Anorexia Nervosa

What Was Tested

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

The present study aimed to investigate the effects of intranasal oxytocin on the interpretation and expression of emotions among people with AN.

Fifteen minutes after administration, the participants completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test to assess the interpretation of complex emotions and mental states followed by a video task, which assessed expressions of facial affect when they were viewing humorous and sad film clips.

Why It Was Studied

Altered social-emotional functioning is considered to play an important role in the development and maintenance of anorexia nervosa (AN).

Thirty women with AN and 29 age-matched healthy women took part in the present study, which used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over design.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, women only.

How the Study Was Run

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

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

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

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Oxytocin group a baseline to be compared against.

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

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Affect, Anorexia Nervosa, Emotional Intelligence, Emotions and Oxytocin.

Author keywords: facial expressions, negative affect, positive affect and social-emotional functioning.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

The publication is from 2017 (Journal of neuroendocrinology), a journal based in United States.

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