Oxytocin reduces top-down control of attention by increasing bottom-up attention allocation to social but not non-social stimuli

Abstract

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) may facilitate attention to social stimuli by influencing early stage bottom-up processing although findings in relation to different emotional expressions are inconsistent and its influence on top-down cognitive processing mechanisms unclear. In the current double-blind, placebo (PLC) controlled, between subject design study we therefore recruited 71 male subjects to investigate the effects of intranasal OXT (24IU) on both bottom-up attention allocation and top-down attention inhibition using a visual antisaccade paradigm with concurrent eye movement acquisition. Our results show that OXT increased antisaccade errors for social stimuli (all types of emotional faces), but not shapes. This effect of OXT was modulated by trait behavioral inhibition and there was also evidence for reduced state anxiety after OXT treatment. Antisaccades are under volitional control and therefore this indicates that OXT treatment produced reduced top-down inhibition. However, the overall findings are consistent with OXT acting to reduce top-down control of attention as a result of increasing bottom-up early attentional processing of social, but not non-social, stimuli in situations where the two systems are in potential conflict. This effect of OXT is also modulated by individual levels of trait behavioral inhibition possibly as a result of an anxiolytic action.