Oral Oxytocin's Effects on Attention Control

Oral Oxytocin's Effects on Attention Control: An Eye-tracking Study

The main aim of the study is to investigate whether orally administered oxytocin (24IU) could modulate attention control using a social-emotional saccade/antisaccade eye-tracking paradigm.

Numerous studies have reported the effect of intranasally administered oxytocin on attentional processing including stimulus-driven bottom-up processing and top-down goal-directed inhibitory control. However, it is unclear whether the functional effects are mediated by the peptide directly entering the brain or indirectly via raising peripheral concentrations. One possible method of producing a similar pattern of increased peripheral oxytocin concentrations but without the possibility of direct entry into the brain would be to administer the peptide lingually. In the present double-blind, between-subject, placebo-controlled study, 80 healthy male subjects will be recruited and receive either oxytocin (24IU) or placebo control administered orally (lingual). 45 minutes after treatment subjects are required to complete a social-emotional saccade/antisaccade eye-tracking paradigm. This paradigm uses social (happy, sad, angry, fear, and neutral faces) as well as non-social (oval shapes) stimuli to explore social- and emotion-specific effects of orally administered oxytocin.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Male, healthy participants
• Non smokers

Exclusion Criteria:

• Previous or current medical, psychiatric, neurological disorder
• Regular medication
• Use of any psychoactive substances in the 24 hours before experiment
• Contra-indications for oxytocin
• Contra-indications for eye-tracking data acquisition