Trial reportSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2015
The influence of oxytocin on volitional and emotional ambivalence.
Trial report in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 40 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural mechanisms of different types of envy: a meta-analysis of activation likelihood estimation methods for brain imaging.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Pooled it
- Moral judgment and hormones: A systematic literature review.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Oxytocin, but not vasopressin, decreases willingness to harm others by promoting moral emotions of guilt and shame.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Trial
- The role of oxytocin in delay of gratification and flexibility in non-social decision making.eLife · 2021Trial
- Oxytocin increases eye-gaze towards novel social and non-social stimuli.Social neuroscience · 2019Trial
- Neural Correlates of Moral Judgment in Dilemma Versus Non-Dilemma Contexts.Brain and behavior · 2026Review
- Would you? Effects of oxytocin on moral choices in forensic psychopathic patients.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Enhanced endogenous oxytocin signaling in the brain modulates neural responses to social misalignment and promotes conformity in humans: A multi-locus genetic profile approach.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- Medication-Enhanced Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Recent Findings on Oxytocin's Involvement in the Neurobiology and Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.Clinical psychology in Europe · 2021Article
- Neural and Molecular Contributions to Pathological Jealousy and a Potential Therapeutic Role for Intranasal Oxytocin.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2021Review
- Hunters and Gatherers of Pictures: Why Photography Has Become a Human Universal.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Oxytocin improves probabilistic reversal learning but not effortful motivation in Brown Norway rats.Neuropharmacology · 2019Article
- Ambivalence: Prerequisite for success in motivational interviewing with adolescents?Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2016Review
- Clinical trial of modulatory effects of oxytocin treatment on higher-order social cognition in autism spectrum disorder: a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind and crossover trial.BMC psychiatry · 2016Article
- Hormonal contraceptives suppress oxytocin-induced brain reward responses to the partner's face.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Moral decisions and social relationships are often characterized by strong feelings of ambivalence which can be a catalyst for emotional distress and several health-related problems. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been identified as a key brain region in monitoring conflicting information, but the neurobiological substrates of ambivalence processing are still widely unknown. We have conducted two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments involving 70 healthy male volunteers to investigate the effects of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) on neural and behavioral correlates of ambivalence. We chose moral decision-making and the imagery of partner infidelity as examples to probe volitional and emotional ambivalence. In both experiments, intranasal OXT diminished neural responses in the ACC to ambivalence. Under OXT, moral dilemma vignettes also elicited a reduced activation in the orbitofrontal cortex, and the imagery of partner infidelity was rated as less arousing. Interestingly, the OXT-induced differential activation in the ACC predicted the magnitude of arousal reduction. Taken together, our findings reveal an unprecedented role of OXT in causing a domain-general decrease of neural responses to ambivalence. By alleviating emotional distress, OXT may qualify as a treatment option for psychiatric disorders with heightened ambivalence sensitivity such as schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder.
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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.