Oxytocin Effect on Attention Inhibition

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Healthy
• Interventions: Drug: oxytocin treatment; Drug: placebo treatment

• Registration Number: NCT03486925
• Lead Sponsor: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Brief Summary

Effects of intranasal oxytocin (24IU) on cognitive control of attention

Detailed Description

The cognitive control of attention towards neutral and emotional stimuli represents a key functional domain and disruptions in this domain have been associated with a range of psychiatric disorders. Saccadic eye movement tasks have been used to assess individual differences in the cognitive control of attention and alterations in psychiatric disorders. Recent evidence suggests that the hypothalamic neuropeptide Oxytocin (OXT) may modulate attention allocation and regulation. To this end the present randomized between-subject placebo-controlled experiment examined whether intranasal OXT modulates behavior in an eye-tracking saccade / anti-saccade paradigm in healthy male subjects. The paradigm used non-social (neutral shape) as well as social (happy, sad, angry, fear, and neutral faces) stimuli to explore emotion-specific effects of OXT.

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2017-12-19
• Study First Submitted: 2018-03-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2018-03-27
• Study First Posted: 2018-04-03
• Primary Completion: 2018-07-20
• Study Completion: 2018-08-28
• Status Verified: 2019-02
• Last Update Submitted: 2019-02-28
• Last Update Posted: 2019-03-04

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: Male
• Target Recruitment: 71

Inclusion Criteria

• Male, healthy participants
• Non smokers

Exclusion Criteria

• Previous or current medical, psychiatric, neurological disorder
• Regular medication
• Use of any psychoactive substances in the 24 hours before experiment
• Contra-indications for oxytocin
• Contra-indications for eye-tracking data acquisition

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
oxytocin group	oxytocin treatment	-
placebo group	placebo treatment	-

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
emotion-specific saccade latencies	45 minutes - 100 minutes after treatment	comparison between emotion-specific saccade latencies between the treatment groups (in milliseconds)
emotion-specific error rates	45 minutes - 100 minutes after treatment	comparison between the emotion-specific ratio of unsuccessful anti-saccades between the treatment groups.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China; 🇨🇳 Chengdu, Sichuan, China