Trial reportBMC psychiatry2016
The effect of oxytocin on attention to angry and happy faces in chronic depression.
Trial report in BMC psychiatry, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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
22 citing papers in PubMed, 67 citations in OpenAlex.
- Oxytocin facilitates top-down and bottom-up attention to emotional faces in a general and temporal-dependent manner.Psychological medicine · 2026Trial
- Oxytocin effects on amygdala reactivity to angry faces in males and females with antisocial personality disorder.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Acute effects of oxytocin in music performance anxiety: a crossover, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.Psychopharmacology · 2020Trial
- Intranasal Oxytocin Selectively Modulates Large-Scale Brain Networks in Humans.Brain connectivity · 2017Trial
- Investigating the impact of serotonergic psychedelic drugs, MDMA and ketamine on social cognition in psychiatric disorders: A scoping review.Psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Effects of Intranasal Oxytocin Across Various Depressive Disorders.Psychiatry investigation · 2025Article
- Sex and hormonal status influence the anxiolytic-like effect of oxytocin in mice.Neurobiology of stress · 2023Article
- Intertwined associations between oxytocin, immune system and major depressive disorder.Biomedicine & pharmacotherapy = Biomedecine & pharmacotherapie · 2023Review
- A Systematic Review of the Role of Oxytocin, Cortisol, and Testosterone in Facial Emotional Processing.Biology · 2021Review
- Time to re-engage psychiatric drug discovery by strengthening confidence in preclinical psychopharmacology.Psychopharmacology · 2021Review
- Emotionally valenced stimuli impact response inhibition in those with substance use disorder and co-occurring anxiety and depression symptoms.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Article
- Acute Psychosocial Stress Modulates the Detection Sensitivity for Facial Emotions.Experimental psychology · 2020Article
- Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Social Atypicalities in Autism: Weak Amygdala's Emotional Modulation Hypothesis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Article
- A Double-Blind Placebo Controlled Study of Intranasal Oxytocin's Effect on Emotion Recognition and Visual Attention in Outpatients with Emotional Disorders.Cognitive therapy and research · 2019Article
- The Role of Intranasal Oxytocin in Anxiety and Depressive Disorders: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2019Review
- Atypical Amygdala-Neocortex Interaction During Dynamic Facial Expression Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- Sexual dimorphism of oxytocin and vasopressin in social cognition and behavior.Psychology research and behavior management · 2019Review
- Impact of intranasal oxytocin on interoceptive accuracy in alcohol users: an attentional mechanism?Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2018Article
- Increased aggression and lack of maternal behavior in Dio3-deficient mice are associated with abnormalities in oxytocin and vasopressin systems.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2018Article
- Impaired detection of happy facial expressions in autism.Scientific reports · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundChronic depression is characterized by a high degree of early life trauma, psychosocial impairment, and deficits in social cognition. Undisturbed recognition and processing of facial emotions are basic prerequisites for smooth social interactions. Intranasal application of the neuropeptide oxytocin has been reported to enhance emotion recognition in neuropsychiatric disorders and healthy individuals. We therefore investigated whether oxytocin modulates attention to emotional faces in patients with chronic depression.
methodsIn this double-blind, randomized, controlled study, 43 patients received a single dose of oxytocin or placebo nasal spray and were tested while fulfilling a facial dot probe task. We assessed reaction times to neutral probes presented at the location of one of two faces depicting happy, angry, or neutral expressions as a prime.
resultsWhen comparing reaction times to the congruent (prime and probe at the same location) with incongruent presentation of facial emotions, neither the placebo nor oxytocin group showed an attentional preference for emotional facial expressions in terms of a threat bias. However, oxytocin treatment did reveal two specific effects: it generally reduced the allocation of attention towards angry facial expressions, and it increased sustained attention towards happy faces, specifically under conditions of heightened awareness, i.e. trials with longer primes.
conclusionsWe investigated a heterogeneous group of medicated male and female patients. We conclude that oxytocin does modulate basic factors of facial emotion processing in chronic depression. Our findings encourage further investigations assessing the therapeutic potential of oxytocin in chronic depression.
trial registrationEUDRA-CT 2010-020956-69 . Date registered: 23 February 2011.
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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.