Behavioral And Neural Effects Of Oxytocin On Empathy

Empathy,is our ability to both recognize and share the emotional experiences of others and plays a crucial role in promoting social communication and interaction in humans.Empathy deficits occur in a number of psychiatric disorders that exhibit social dysfunction,such as autism,anxiety,depression and schizophrenia.Oxytocin is a hypothalamic neuropeptide that promotes social recognition and affiliative bonds across species.In humans there is also some evidence that oxytocin can facilitate empathy and may therefore have potential for use as a therapeutic agent for social dysfunction.Currently,which specific components of empathy are influenced by oxytocin,and the neural mechanisms involved,have not been fully established and the extent to which they are modulated by traits associated with social dysfunction.Thus,there is an urgent need to provide a more detailed understanding of how oxytocin can modulate empathy.The research described here is comprised of three studies designed to examine the behavioral and neural effects of oxytocin administration on the two main subcomponents of empathy,cognitive and emotional.The first study specifically focused on the effects of oxytocin on cognitive empathy,since previous findings in this respect have been inconsistent.Since some studies have reported that oxytocin can increase fixation on the eye region during emotion recognition and that this may help to increase ability to recognize emotions(i.e.,cognitive empathy).Using a revised reading the mind in the eyes paradigm the effects of intranasal oxytocin on recognition of Chinese emotional faces which included only the eye region were investigated in male subjects(n = 60)in a between subject,placebo controlled,double-blind study.Results showed that oxytocin produced highly selective effects on emotion recognition by increasing recognition accuracy for male happy expressions but decreasing it for sad female ones.Oxytocin also increased the mistakes of classifying sad female expressions as angry and reduced response times for male happy expressions.Previous oxytocin research on empathy in male Europeans using a multifaceted empathy task(MET)found that it facilitated emotional but not cognitive empathy components.In the second study a between-subject,placebo controlled,double blind study firstly attempted to replicate this behavioral finding in male Chinese subjects(n =60)using a Chinese version of the MET.The results confirmed that intranasal oxytocin facilitated both direct and indirect aspects of emotional empathy,particularly in individuals with high autistic traits,but had no effect on cognitive empathy.Next,the same approach and paradigm were used in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)and also measuring skin conductance responses(SCR)in both male and female subjects(n = 72).Results replicated behavioral findings on emotional empathy in both male and female subjects and that oxytocin facilitation of emotional empathy was associated with reduced amygdala activity and increased SCR during emotional empathy trials.Amygdala effects of oxytocin during emotional empathy trials were also modulated by trait autism.In summary,two different studies were designed to examine the behavioral and neural effects of oxytocin on empathic responses in different contexts.The results demonstrated firstly that while oxytocin could influence cognitive empathy for specific emotions it could act both to increase and decrease accuracy.On the other hand,oxytocin consistently facilitated emotional empathy.Results also provide the first evidence that the effects of oxytocin on facilitating emotional empathy are associated with its attenuation of amygdala responses.