Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 61, Issue 6, 15 March 2007, Pages 731-733
Biological Psychiatry

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Oxytocin Improves “Mind-Reading” in Humans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2006.07.015Get rights and content

Background

The ability to “read the mind” of other individuals, that is, to infer their mental state by interpreting subtle social cues, is indispensable in human social interaction. The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a central role in social approach behavior in nonhuman mammals.

Methods

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design, 30 healthy male volunteers were tested for their ability to infer the affective mental state of others using the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) after intranasal administration of 24 IU oxytocin.

Results

Oxytocin improved performance on the RMET compared with placebo. This effect was pronounced for difficult compared with easy items.

Conclusions

Our data suggest that oxytocin improves the ability to infer the mental state of others from social cues of the eye region. Oxytocin might play a role in the pathogenesis of autism spectrum disorder, which is characterized by severe social impairment.

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

In this study, we used a double-blind placebo-controlled within-subject design to investigate the effects of a single dose of intranasal oxytocin on the performance of inferring mental states from the eye region, measured with the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test” (RMET; Baron-Cohen et al 2001). It should be noted that the RMET tests a specific facet of mind-reading, that is, inference of the internal state from subtle affective facial expressions rather than mind-reading in general. Because

Results

Compared with placebo, oxytocin improved performance on the RMET in 20 of the 30 participants. This resulted in a significant mean increase of approximately 3% correct responses (mean ± SD: placebo: 69.4 ± 8.1; oxytocin: 72.4 ± 8.6; t = −2.18, df = 29, p = .019, one-sided; see Figure 1). We hypothesized that oxytocin would particularly improve the performance on those pictures that represent highly subtle social cues by showing eye regions that are difficult to interpret in terms of the

Discussion

In sum, this study shows that a single dose of intranasally administered oxytocin is sufficient to cause a substantial increase in the ability in affective mind-reading and therefore in interpreting subtle social cues from the eye region of other individuals. The ability of mind-reading is involved in almost all kinds of human social interactions. Evidence for the key role of oxytocin in prosocial behavior and affiliation has come primarily from studies in animals (Bartz and Hollander in press,

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