Oxytocin Facilitation of Emotional Empathy Is Associated With Increased Eye Gaze Toward the Faces of Individuals in Emotional Contexts

Jiao Le, Juan Kou, Weihua Zhao, Meina Fu, Yingying Zhang, Benjamin Becker, Keith M Kendrick, Jiao Le, Juan Kou, Weihua Zhao, Meina Fu, Yingying Zhang, Benjamin Becker, Keith M Kendrick

Abstract

One of the most robust effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment is its enhancement of emotional empathy responses across cultures to individuals displaying emotions in realistic contexts in the Multifaceted Empathy Task (MET). However, it is not established if this effect of oxytocin on emotional empathy is due to altered visual attention toward different components of the stimulus pictures or an enhanced empathic response. In the current randomized placebo-controlled within-subject experiment on 40 healthy male individuals, we both attempted a further replication of emotional empathy enhancement by intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) and used eye-tracking measures to determine if this was associated by altered visual attention toward different components of the picture stimuli (background context, human face, and body posture). Results replicated previous findings of enhanced emotional empathy in response to both negative and positive stimuli and that this was associated with an increased proportion of time viewing the faces of humans in the pictures and a corresponding decrease in that toward the rest of the body and/or background context. Overall, our findings suggest that enhanced emotional empathy following oxytocin administration is due to increased attention to the faces of others displaying emotions and away from other contextual and social cues. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov Oxytocin Modulates Eye Gaze Behavior During Social Processing; registration ID: NCT03293511; URL: https://ichgcp.net/clinical-trials-registry/NCT03293511.

Keywords: autism; emotional empathy; eye gaze; face processing; oxytocin; social attention.

Copyright © 2020 Le, Kou, Zhao, Fu, Zhang, Becker and Kendrick.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The effects of oxytocin (OT) on emotional empathy ratings. Subjects were asked to rate positive and negative valence pictures on: “how much do you feel the same as the person in the picture (i.e., direct emotional empathy)” from 1 to 9 (1 = not at all and 9 = very strongly). Error bars represent SEM. **p < 0.01, OXT vs. PLC and positive vs. negative valence.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
The effects of oxytocin (OT) treatment on eye gaze directed toward the face, body, or background regions during the emotional empathy (EE) task. (A) The mean percentage total fixation duration of face, body, and background across two valence (positive, negative). (B) The effects of oxytocin (OT) treatment on mean percentage total fixation duration of face, body, and background across two valence (positive, negative). Error bars represent SEM. ***p < 0.001, *p < 0.05, OXT vs. PLC.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Correlation (Spearman) between emotional empathy ratings and percentage of total fixation duration using treatment differences scores (i.e., OT minus PLC treatment). Tfd, total fixation duration. Negative face: face region in negative valence pictures. Positive face: face region in positive valence pictures. Emotional empathy ratings for “how much do you feel the same as the person in the picture (i.e., direct emotional empathy)” from 1 to 9 (1 = not at all and 9 = very strongly). OT – PLC, OT minus PLC treatment condition.

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