Oxytocin Enhances Amygdala-Dependent, Socially Reinforced Learning and Emotional Empathy in Humans

By R. Hurlemann, Alexandra Patin, O. Onur, Michael X. Cohen, Tobias Baumgartner, S. Metzler, Isabel Dziobek, J. Gallinat, M. Wagner, W. Maier and 1 more. Journal of Neuroscience, 2010

758 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Oxytocin (OT) is becoming increasingly established as a prosocial neuropeptide in humans with therapeutic potential in treatment of social, cognitive, and mood disorders. However, the potential of OT as a general facilitator of human learning and empathy is unclear. The current double-blind experiments on healthy adult male volunteers investigated first whether treatment with intranasal OT enhanced learning performance on a feedback-guided item–category association task where either social (smiling and angry faces) or nonsocial (green and red lights) reinforcers were used, and second whether it increased either cognitive or emotional empathy measured by the Multifaceted Empathy Test. Further experiments investigated whether OT-sensitive behavioral components required a normal functional amygdala. Results in control groups showed that learning performance was improved when social rather than nonsocial reinforcement was used. Intranasal OT potentiated this social reinforcement advantage and greatly increased emotional, but not cognitive, empathy in response to both positive and negative valence stimuli. Interestingly, after OT treatment, emotional empathy responses in men were raised to levels similar to those found in untreated women. Two patients with selective bilateral damage to the amygdala (monozygotic twins with congenital Urbach–Wiethe disease) were impaired on both OT-sensitive aspects of these learning and empathy tasks, but performed normally on nonsocially reinforced learning and cognitive empathy. Overall these findings provide the first demonstration that OT can facilitate amygdala-dependent, socially reinforced learning and emotional empathy in men.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Pharmacy, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/13af4b3cea15c35bfb7a52bba478b92091bbff54

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Citations in the corpus

A lifespan perspective on attachment and care for others: Empathy, altruism, and prosocial behavior (2016, neutral): “…& Levine, 2007; Young & Wang, 2004), parenting (Bakermans-Kranenburg & Van IJzendoorn, 2008; Feldman et al., 2012; Galbally, Lewis, Van IJzendoorn, & Permezel, 2011), empathy (Bartz et al., 2010; Hurlemann et al., 2010), and altruistic behavior (De Dreu et al., 2010; Zak, Stanton, & Ahmadi, 2007).”
From Mind Perception to Mental Connection: Synchrony as a Mechanism for Social Understanding (2012, positive): “…this hormone increases empathy (Guastella, Mitchell, & Dadds, 2008; Singer et al., 2008), recognition accuracy of social cues (Domes, Heinrichs M., A. Berger, & Herpertz, 2010; Hurlemann et al., 2010; Marsh, Yu, Pine, & Blair, 2010), and trust (Kosfeld, Heinrichs, Zak, Fischbacher, & Fehr, 2005).”
The Social Salience Hypothesis of Oxytocin. (2016, neutral): “10 women (78), and differentially affects social perception, such that it facilitates the accurate”
The Adaptive Calibration Model of stress responsivity (2010, positive): “…and altruism, stimulate affiliative social interactions and approach behavior, and enhance emotional empathy (e.g., Alvares et al., 2010; Ditzen et al., 2009; Domes et al., 2010; Kemp and Guastella, 2010; Hurlemann et al., 2010; Kosfeld et al., 2005; Theodoridou et al., 2009; Zak et al., 2005).”
The neuroscience of social decision-making. (2011, background): “…on UG offers, coupled with their lack of an effect on offers in the DG that are thought to represent " pure altruism " , suggest that they may be modulating the ability to both empathize with and predict the behavior of one's partner, but in opposite ways (Hurlemann et al. 2010, Zak et al. 2009).”
Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits, and Genes (2012, background): “Another study demonstrated that intranasal oxytocin improved social but not nonsocial learning and increased affective but not cognitive empathy in the Movie for the Assessment for Social Cognition (MASC) (Hurleman et al., 2010).”