Oxytocin Decreases Aversion to Angry Faces in an Associative Learning Task

Social and financial considerations are often integrated when real life decisions are made, and recent studies have provided evidence that similar brain networks are engaged when either social or financial information is integrated. Other studies, however, have suggested that the neuropeptide oxytocin can specifically affect social behaviors, which would suggest separable mechanisms at the pharmacological level. Thus, we examined the hypothesis that oxytocin would specifically affect social and not financial information in a decision making task, in which participants learned which of the two faces, one smiling and the other angry or sad, was most often being rewarded. We found that oxytocin specifically decreased aversion to angry faces, without affecting integration of positive or negative financial feedback or choices related to happy vs sad faces. Neuropsychopharmacology ( 2010) 35, 2502-2509; doi:10.1038/npp.2010.110; published online 15 September 2010