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The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study

Humans display an intriguing propensity to help the victim of social norm violations or punish the violators which require theory-of-mind (ToM)/mentalizing abilities. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in modulating various pro-social behaviors/perception including trust, co...

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Autores principales: Hu, Yang, Scheele, Dirk, Becker, Benjamin, Voos, Georg, David, Bastian, Hurlemann, René, Weber, Bernd
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4735743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26832991
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20236
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author Hu, Yang
Scheele, Dirk
Becker, Benjamin
Voos, Georg
David, Bastian
Hurlemann, René
Weber, Bernd
author_facet Hu, Yang
Scheele, Dirk
Becker, Benjamin
Voos, Georg
David, Bastian
Hurlemann, René
Weber, Bernd
author_sort Hu, Yang
collection PubMed
description Humans display an intriguing propensity to help the victim of social norm violations or punish the violators which require theory-of-mind (ToM)/mentalizing abilities. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in modulating various pro-social behaviors/perception including trust, cooperation, and empathy. However, it is still elusive whether OXT also influences neural responses during third-party altruistic decisions, especially in ToM-related brain regions such as the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). To address this question, we conducted a pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment with healthy male participants in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design. After the intranasal administration synthetic OXT (OXT(IN)) or placebo (PLC), participants could transfer money from their own endowment to either punish a norm violator or help the victim. In some trials, participants observed the decisions made by a computer. Behaviorally, participants under OXT(IN) showed a trend to accelerate altruistic decisions. At the neural level, we observed a strong three-way interaction between drug treatment (OXT/PLC), agency (self/computer), and decision (help/punish), such that OXT(IN) selectively enhanced activity in the left TPJ during observations of others being helped by the computer. Collectively, our findings indicate that OXT enhances prosocial-relevant perception by increasing ToM-related neural activations.
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spelling pubmed-47357432016-02-05 The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study Hu, Yang Scheele, Dirk Becker, Benjamin Voos, Georg David, Bastian Hurlemann, René Weber, Bernd Sci Rep Article Humans display an intriguing propensity to help the victim of social norm violations or punish the violators which require theory-of-mind (ToM)/mentalizing abilities. The hypothalamic peptide oxytocin (OXT) has been implicated in modulating various pro-social behaviors/perception including trust, cooperation, and empathy. However, it is still elusive whether OXT also influences neural responses during third-party altruistic decisions, especially in ToM-related brain regions such as the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). To address this question, we conducted a pharmacological functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment with healthy male participants in a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design. After the intranasal administration synthetic OXT (OXT(IN)) or placebo (PLC), participants could transfer money from their own endowment to either punish a norm violator or help the victim. In some trials, participants observed the decisions made by a computer. Behaviorally, participants under OXT(IN) showed a trend to accelerate altruistic decisions. At the neural level, we observed a strong three-way interaction between drug treatment (OXT/PLC), agency (self/computer), and decision (help/punish), such that OXT(IN) selectively enhanced activity in the left TPJ during observations of others being helped by the computer. Collectively, our findings indicate that OXT enhances prosocial-relevant perception by increasing ToM-related neural activations. Nature Publishing Group 2016-02-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4735743/ /pubmed/26832991 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20236 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Hu, Yang
Scheele, Dirk
Becker, Benjamin
Voos, Georg
David, Bastian
Hurlemann, René
Weber, Bernd
The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title_full The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title_fullStr The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title_short The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study
title_sort effect of oxytocin on third-party altruistic decisions in unfair situations: an fmri study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4735743/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26832991
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20236
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