Intranasal Oxytocin Administration and the Neural Correlates of Social and Non-Social Visual Perception
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2015-12-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of oxytocin on social behavior and
brain activity using EEG and the event-related potential (ERP) technique. The value of EEG is
its high temporal specificity, enabling precision in the timing of social behavior to be
addressed. In order to elicit social responses in the human brain, a variety of social and
emotional visual stimuli will be presented during EEG recording, namely infant and adult
faces and houses. Brain responses after intranasal oxytocin will then be compared with
placebo, to examine the effect of intranasal oxytocin on central nervous system activity. We
hypothesize that intranasal oxytocin will enhance the neural response to social stimuli
(infant and adult faces) but not to non-social stimuli (houses).