Oxytocin Enhances Neural Approach towards Social and Non-Social Stimuli of High Personal Relevance

This study published in Scientific Reports investigated how intranasal oxytocin modulates behavioral and neural responses to stimuli with different levels of personal relevance. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design, participants received 24 IU of intranasal oxytocin or placebo before performing approach-avoidance tasks while being monitored by electroencephalography (EEG).

The results revealed that oxytocin significantly amplified the behavioral approach tendency and neural activity towards stimuli with high personal relevance. A particularly interesting finding was that this effect occurred regardless of whether the stimuli were social or non-social and regardless of affective valence (positive or negative), challenging the traditional view that oxytocin acts exclusively on social cognition.

EEG analyses showed specific modulations in event-related potential components related to motivational processing, indicating that oxytocin influences fundamental neural mechanisms of salience and personal relevance.

These findings have important implications for understanding the mechanism of action of oxytocin, suggesting that its role extends beyond pure social facilitation, acting as a broader modulator of motivational responses to personally significant stimuli. This may explain why oxytocin sometimes produces pro-social effects and, in other contexts, apparently anti-social effects.