Intranasal vasopressin like oxytocin increases social attention by influencing top-down control, but additionally enhances bottom-up control

PSYCHONEUROENDOCRINOLOGY

卷:133

Article

Zhuang, Qian¹  Zheng, Xiaoxiao¹  Becker, Benjamin¹  Lei, Wei²  Xu, Xiaolei¹  Kendrick, Keith M.¹ 

[1] Univ Elect Sci & Technol China, Clin Hosp, Ctr Informat Med,West Hitech Zone, MOE Key Lab Neuroinformat,Chengdu Brain Sci Inst, 2006 Xiyuan Ave, Chengdu 611761, Sichuan, Peoples R China

[2] Southwest Med Univ, Dept Psychiat, Affiliated Hosp, Luzhou, Sichuan, Peoples R China

关键词: Arginine vasopressin;    Attention control;    Emotion;    Anti-saccade task;    Oxytocin;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.psyneuen.2021.105412

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The respective roles of the neuropeptides arginine vasopressin (AVP) and oxytocin (OXT) in modulating social cognition and for therapeutic intervention in autism spectrum disorder have not been fully established. In particular, while numerous studies have demonstrated effects of oxytocin in promoting social attention the role of AVP has not been examined. The present study employed a randomized, double-blind, placebo (PLC)-controlled between-subject design to explore the social- and emotion-specific effects of AVP on both bottom-up and top-down attention processing with a validated emotional anti-saccade eye-tracking paradigm in 80 healthy male subjects (PLC = 40, AVP = 40). Our findings showed that AVP increased the error rate for social (angry, fearful, happy, neutral and sad faces) but not non-social (oval shapes) stimuli during the anti-saccade condition and reduced error rates in the pro-saccade condition. Comparison of these findings with a previous study (sample size: PLC = 33, OXT = 33) using intranasal oxytocin revealed similar effects of the two peptides on anti-saccade errors, although with some difference in effects of specific face emotions, but a significantly greater effect of AVP on pro-saccades. Both peptides also produced a post-task anxiolytic effect by reducing state anxiety. Together these findings suggested that both AVP and OXT decrease goal-directed top-down attention control to social salient stimuli but that AVP more potently increased bottom-up social attentional processing.

【 授权许可】

Free