Effect of Intranasal Neuropeptide on Emotion Perception in Trait Anxiety

The purpose of this study is to learn more about how emotional processing may be affected by a hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that occurs naturally in the body, and may play an important role in the way that the brain perceives information.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Social Intelligence
• Intervention / Treatment: Drug: Placebo; Drug: Oxytocin

Detailed Description

Extensive research has been conducted to examine cognitive styles in anxiety disorders that may contribute to the psychopathology of these disorders. One of the most consistent findings has been that anxious subjects attend preferentially to threatening stimuli. This attentional bias, which would increase time spent attending to and processing threatening stimuli such as words, sentences, or faces, is thought to help provoke and maintain anxiety states. This is supported by research that demonstrates that reduction in anxiety symptoms is associated with a decrease in attentional bias. Related to an attentional bias is the concept of a perceptual bias, from which people with anxiety disorders may be more perceptive to negative emotional cues. For example, Duncan and Barrett (2007) found a negative correlation between objective awareness of quickly presented faces depicting fear and extraversion. Participants who reported greater extraversion (i.e., pleasure derived from social interactions) were less likely to see 16 ms presentations of faces depicting fear. Thus, it appears that how someone feels is related to and may influence the information they see in their environment. The investigators thus hypothesize that the presence of chronic anxiety disorders may be linked to perceptual biases, and may actually influence how and what information they perceive (their sensory experience). People with anxiety disorders may be less likely to see positive objects and more likely to see negative objects. Although the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these anxiety disorders remain uncertain, one hypothesis implicates the dysregulation of the neuropeptide oxytocin.

Oxytocin is a nine-amino-acid peptide which has a role in maintaining social behavior, and it has been found to decrease anxiety. Researchers have postulated that the anti-anxiety affects of oxytocin are related to the trust and pro-approach behaviors associated with this peptide. For example, mice treated with oxytocin spend more time in the previously avoided open areas of a maze. In a study in humans using healthy volunteers, participants were administered oxytocin or placebo before they played a game with monetary rewards involving trust with a stranger. Those who received oxytocin transferred higher amounts of money to the other player than those who received placebo. This behavior, involving increased comfort with a novel individual or setting, appears to be related to the effects of oxytocin.

As described above, individuals with high levels of anxiety have a perception bias towards emotional stimuli, such as pictures of faces. Oxytocin's anxiolytic, pro-approach and trust effects may decrease this bias, and may cause an individual to experience people or things in the environment as less threatening.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 47
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Massachusetts
    • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02114
      • Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress Disorders (CATSD)

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 65 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• No current Axis I according to Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for Psychiatry-IV excluded diagnoses as determined by MINI or Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnosis psychiatric diagnostic interview completed within the past 6 months
• Age 18 to 65
• Subjects must be able to give informed consent and be willing and able to comply with study procedures.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients with severe unstable medical illness, clinically significant laboratory findings, or serious medical illness for which hospitalization may be likely within the next three months
• Pregnant or lactating women.
• Subjects currently taking hormones, such as estrogen.
• Known hypersensitivity to oxytocin or to any of the excipients of Syntocinon Nasal spray.
• Known hyponatremia or concurrent use of diuretics.
• Subjects with a history of seizure disorder.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Double

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Placebo Comparator: Placebo; Matched nasal spray placebo.	Drug: Placebo; Matched nasal spray placebo
Experimental: Oxytocin; Liquid intranasal oxytocin administered in a nasal spray.	Drug: Oxytocin; Liquid metered-dose nasal spray, 30 IUs, administered once.; Other Names: Syntocinon

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Affective Ratings in Affective Learning Task	We will measure the effect of the drug on affective learning, using the Affective Learning Task. Participants viewed 30 neutral faces, each paired with one sentence describing a negative positive, or neutral behavior, counterbalanced across participants. During the test phase, participants will rate the faces as negative, neutral, or positive. These ratings were averaged. Responses were coded as: negative = -1, neutral = 0, positive =1, so the averaged scores have a possible range between -1 and 1. Since this is not a treatment study for a disease, there is so "better" or "worse" outcome.	30 minutes after drug administration

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Massachusetts General Hospital
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Elizabeth A Hoge, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start: February 1, 2009
• Primary Completion (Actual): December 1, 2012
• Study Completion (Actual): December 1, 2012

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: February 21, 2012
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 7, 2012
• First Posted (Estimate): March 12, 2012

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): June 30, 2014
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 29, 2014
• Last Verified: March 1, 2014

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Physiological Effects of Drugs; Reproductive Control Agents; Oxytocics; Oxytocin
• Other Study ID Numbers: 2009P-000387