Oxytocin enhances attentional bias for neutral and positive expression faces in individuals with higher autistic traits

Abstract

There is considerable interest in the potential therapeutic role of the neuropeptide oxytocin in altering attentional bias towards emotional social stimuli in psychiatric disorders. However, it is still unclear whether oxytocin primarily influences attention towards positive or negative valence social stimuli. Here in a double-blind, placebo controlled, between subject design experiment in 60 healthy male subjects we have used the highly sensitive dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm to investigate whether intranasal oxytocin (40IU) treatment alters attentional bias for emotional faces. Results show that oxytocin improved recognition accuracy of neutral and happy expression faces presented in the second target position (T2) during the period of reduced attentional capacity following prior presentation of a first neutral face target (T1), but had no effect on recognition of negative expression faces (angry, fearful, sad). Oxytocin also had no effect on recognition of non-social stimuli (digits) in this task. Recognition accuracy for neutral faces at T2 was negatively associated with autism spectrum quotient (ASQ) scores in the placebo group, and oxytocin's facilitatory effects were restricted to a sub-group of subjects with higher ASQ scores. Our results therefore indicate that oxytocin primarily enhances the allocation of attentional resources towards faces expressing neutral or positive emotion and does not influence that towards negative emotion ones or non-social stimuli. This effect of oxytocin is strongest in healthy individuals with higher autistic trait scores, thereby providing further support for its potential therapeutic use in autism spectrum disorder.

Keywords: Attentional bias; Autism spectrum disorder; Empathy; Face emotion; Oxytocin; Visual information processing.