No registrations found.
ID
Source
Health condition
empathy and emotional processing
Sponsors and support
Intervention
Outcome measures
Primary outcome
1. Electromyographic (EMG) responses to presented happy and angry faces;
2. Attentional bias to happy and anxious faces over neutral faces;
3. The amount of distraction by emotional pictures compared to neutral pictures during a working memory task.
Secondary outcome
The effect of oxytocin administration will be compared between
subjects that score high or low on questionnaires measuring, anxiety, depression, empathy and autistic traits.
Background summary
Empathy is a human emotion related to understanding and feeling the emotions of others. Lately, there has been increasing interest in the neurobiological backgrounds of empathy. The hormone oxytocin (OT) seems to play an important role in empathy and in empathy related disorders. In this study we will investigate the effects of 24 IU intranasal oxytocin administration on implicit empathic behaviors in healthy male volunteers. We will measure automatic facial mimicry to, and attentional bias for emotional faces, and the strength of distraction by emotional information both after oxytocin and after a placebo spray in a double-blind crossover design. We expect OT to increase empathic responding.
Study objective
Oxytocin administration leads to stronger empathic reponses and faster emotional processing.
Study design
Placebo controlled cross-over design with 1 week in between. Tasks will be performed within 90 minutes after nasal spray administration.
Intervention
A nasal oxytocin spray is administered once containing 24 IU oxytocin (6 puffs). This will be compared with a placebo nasal spray in a cross-over design. Thirty minutes after nasal spray administration computer tasks will be performed to measure the effects of the oxytocin spray versus placebo.
Inclusion criteria
1. Male;
2. Age 18 - 35;
3. Healthy (see exclusion criteria).
Exclusion criteria
1. Major physical illness such as heart problems, high blood pressure, diabetis, epilepsy, liver disease, or any other serious medical condition;
2. Current or past (< 5 years) psychiatric disorders, as assessed by selfreport;
3. Medication use that can interfere with the study;
4. Use of more than 3 glasses of alcohol per day;
5. Use of more than 10 cigarettes per day;
6. Use of hard drugs;
7. Common use of soft drugs (cannabis) - at least once per week in the last 3 months.
Design
Recruitment
Followed up by the following (possibly more current) registration
Other (possibly less up-to-date) registrations in this register
No registrations found.
In other registers
| Register | ID |
|---|---|
| NTR-new | NL2715 |
| NTR-old | NTR2853 |
| CCMO | NL36378.058.11 |
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN wordt niet meer aangevraagd. |
| OMON | NL-OMON36038 |