Trial reportSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2013
Oxytocin enhances pupil dilation and sensitivity to 'hidden' emotional expressions.
Trial report in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 59 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Intranasal (Optinose Bidirectional Nose-to-brain Device) Versus Intravenous Slow Infusion of Oxytocin - a Randomized, Placebo- Controlled Double-blind, Double-dummy 4-period Cross-over Study in Healthy Adult Volunteers Evaluating Brain Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Changes, Cognitive Response, Heart Rate Variability, Plasma Pharmacokinetics and Saliva Concentration After Single-dose Oxytocin 8 or 24 International Units (IU) Intranasally or 1 IU as Slow Intravenous Infusion
A Randomized, Placebo Controlled, Double-blind, 3-period Cross-over Study in Adult Patients With Autism Spectrum Disorders Evaluating Cognitive Response After Single- Dose Oxytocin 8 or 24 IU Intranasal Administration Using the OptiNose Bi-directional Nose-to-brain Device
Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 153 citations in OpenAlex.
- Potential shortcomings in current studies on the effect of intranasal oxytocin in Anorexia Nervosa and healthy controls - A systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychopharmacology · 2020Pooled it
- The impact of a single administration of intranasal oxytocin on the recognition of basic emotions in humans: a meta-analysis.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2013Pooled it
- The role of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex on voluntary emotion regulation of social pain.Human brain mapping · 2023Trial
- Temporal profile of intranasal oxytocin in the human autonomic nervous system at rest: An electrocardiography and pupillometry study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2023Trial
- The effect of intranasal oxytocin on visual processing and salience of human faces.Translational psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Oxytocin increases eye-gaze towards novel social and non-social stimuli.Social neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Low-dose intranasal oxytocin delivered with Breath Powered device modulates pupil diameter and amygdala activity: a randomized controlled pupillometry and fMRI study.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Post-retrieval oxytocin facilitates next day extinction of threat memory in humans.Psychopharmacology · 2019Trial
- Dose-dependent social-cognitive effects of intranasal oxytocin delivered with novel Breath Powered device in adults with autism spectrum disorder: a randomized placebo-controlled double-blind crossover trial.Translational psychiatry · 2017Trial
- Pupil-mimicry conditions trust in partners: moderation by oxytocin and group membership.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Trial
- Distinct oxytocin effects on belief updating in response to desirable and undesirable feedback.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Trial
- Low-dose oxytocin delivered intranasally with Breath Powered device affects social-cognitive behavior: a randomized four-way crossover trial with nasal cavity dimension assessment.Translational psychiatry · 2015Trial
- Oxytocin-augmented social cognitive skills training in schizophrenia.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2014Trial
- Trial
- Complexity of the Hypothalamic Oxytocin System and its Involvement in Brain Functions and Diseases.Neuroscience bulletin · 2025Review
- How does oxytocin modulate human behavior?Molecular psychiatry · 2025Review
- Effects of oxytocin on agency in anxiously attached individuals: a replication and extension.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Touch as emotion regulation.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Psychophysiology of facial emotion recognition in psychopathy dimensions and oxytocin's role: A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
- Older adults are relatively more susceptible to impulsive social influence than young adults.Communications psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sensing others' emotions through subtle facial expressions is a highly important social skill. We investigated the effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment on the evaluation of explicit and 'hidden' emotional expressions and related the results to individual differences in sensitivity to others' subtle expressions of anger and happiness. Forty healthy volunteers participated in this double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, which shows that a single dose of intranasal oxytocin (40 IU) enhanced or 'sharpened' evaluative processing of others' positive and negative facial expression for both explicit and hidden emotional information. Our results point to mechanisms that could underpin oxytocin's prosocial effects in humans. Importantly, individual differences in baseline emotional sensitivity predicted oxytocin's effects on the ability to sense differences between faces with hidden emotional information. Participants with low emotional sensitivity showed greater oxytocin-induced improvement. These participants also showed larger task-related pupil dilation, suggesting that they also allocated the most attentional resources to the task. Overall, oxytocin treatment enhanced stimulus-induced pupil dilation, consistent with oxytocin enhancement of attention towards socially relevant stimuli. Since pupil dilation can be associated with increased attractiveness and approach behaviour, this effect could also represent a mechanism by which oxytocin increases human affiliation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.