Saturday, October 20, 2012

Ocytocin and Emotion Recognition

Article from Psychology Today that talks about Oxytocin and the recognition of emotional facial expressions by those with Autism Spectrum Disorder:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201210/weeks-top-posts-1/emotion-recognition-in-autism

"For the experiment, Yamada recruited 19 men with an ASD and 19 men without any ASD as a control group. He tested the ability to recognize emotions after he gave them oxytocin and again after he gave them a placebo. Both the oxytocin and placebo were given through a nasal spray, a technique used in many oxytocin studies. Half the participants received oxytocin first, and the other half received placebo first.

...

Here's where it got interesting. Whereas the control group did not improve for difficult emotions following oxytocin dosing, the ASD group showed a marked improvement. The control group got 45 percent correct, but the ASD group now recognized around 43 percent of difficult emotions. They improved about eight points compared to placebo, and almost matched the performance of the control group.

To understand the relationship between severity of ASD and improvement on the task, Yamada calculated how much better each person did at recognizing difficult emotions following oxytocin. He found that the individuals with the most severe ASDs showed the most improvement on the RMET after taking oxytocin.

His findings suggest a possible role for oxytocin in ASDs. Lower levels may be part of the reason why individuals with ASDs tend to have more difficulty recognizing emotions. However, the role of oxytocin may depend on the severity of the disorder. "

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