Nasal Oxytocin Regulates Behavior And Neural Responses After Social Rejection

Social exclusion is very common.Social exclusion refers to neglect or exclusion of a person or a group.Social exclusion is a universal phenomenon that exists in different cultures,eras and species.In recent years,studies have suggested that oxytocin has a good regulatory effect on social behavior and is considered to be a regulator of social behavior.Retaliation refers to the harm or negative impact of an individual's behavior on others.Previous studies have found that individuals will retaliate after social exclusion.Oxytocin can promote individual prosocial tendencies and prosocial behaviors.Although it is generally believed that prosocial behavior and revenge behavior have different neurophysiological mechanisms,we classify it as social behavior.Exploring clearly what mechanisms oxytocin regulates social behavior helps us better understand the process.In the past studies on social exclusion,event-related potentials(ERPs)were used to study the neural mechanisms of social rejection.In social exclusion studies,the Cyberball paradigm is often used to explore the brain response of individuals when they are socially rejected.Two slow waves in the brain,the P300 and LPP(Late Positive Potential)components,are generally considered to reflect the emotional processing process.Previous studies on oxytocin affecting social exclusion have the following shortcomings.First,only attention to oxytocin enhances the prosocial behavior of individuals,but does not pay attention to the impact of oxytocin on the revenge behavior of individuals after social exclusion.Secondly,the use of event-related potential techniques to study how the oxytocin regulates social behavior is still rarely involved.Our research hopes to explore the neurological mechanisms of oxytocin influencing individuals' social exclusion and the effects of oxytocin on individual retaliation after social exclusion through event-related potential methods.The first experiment in this study used the classic Cyberball paradigm to explore the effects of oxytocin on the revenge behavior of individuals after social exclusion.In experiment 1,the P300 component and behavior data were mainly investigated.It was found that oxytocin significantly reduced the revenge behavior of individuals after rejection compared with the control group.The EEG found that the society refused to receive information relative to the society.In the oxytocin group,the scalp induced a larger P300 component,which may be negative.Related to mood regulation,the larger P300 component reflects stronger emotional regulation.Experiment 2 used a 21-point gambling game,which changed the individual's social exclusion situation,and examined the brain activity and the regulation of oxytocin when the subject was rejected as a “coach” and rejected by the “student”.The behavioral results showed that the response of the oxytocin group was significantly greater than that of the control group,indicating that the oxytocin group had more thoughts;in the EEG results,there was a significant difference between the social acceptance of the control group and the LPP induced by the rejection condition.The difference in the oxytocin group was not significant.The LPP component may reflect the emotional regulation after social rejection combined with the complex properties of the feedback stimuli in this experimental paradigm.The EEG changes in the LPP time window may reflect the delayed feedback negative component,and the negative feedback negative deflection represents the larger The greater the negative expected error.EEG found that oxytocin affected the amplitude of LPP,as shown by the fact that the social rejection condition of the control group induced a more negative deflection relative to the acceptance condition;there was no difference between the two conditions in the induction group.We believe that oxytocin may regulate social behavior by regulating individual expectations of social feedback.