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Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making

BACKGROUND: Impaired empathic abilities lead to severe negative social consequences and influence the development and treatment of several psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, empathy has been shown to play a crucial role in moral and prosocial behavior. Although the serotonin system has been implica...

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Autores principales: Pokorny, Thomas, Preller, Katrin H, Kometer, Michael, Dziobek, Isabel, Vollenweider, Franz X
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28637246
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyx047
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author Pokorny, Thomas
Preller, Katrin H
Kometer, Michael
Dziobek, Isabel
Vollenweider, Franz X
author_facet Pokorny, Thomas
Preller, Katrin H
Kometer, Michael
Dziobek, Isabel
Vollenweider, Franz X
author_sort Pokorny, Thomas
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Impaired empathic abilities lead to severe negative social consequences and influence the development and treatment of several psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, empathy has been shown to play a crucial role in moral and prosocial behavior. Although the serotonin system has been implicated in modulating empathy and moral behavior, the relative contribution of the various serotonin receptor subtypes is still unknown. METHODS: We investigated the acute effect of psilocybin (0.215 mg/kg p.o.) in healthy human subjects on different facets of empathy and hypothetical moral decision-making using the multifaceted empathy test (n=32) and the moral dilemma task (n=24). RESULTS: Psilocybin significantly increased emotional, but not cognitive empathy compared with placebo, and the increase in implicit emotional empathy was significantly associated with psilocybin-induced changed meaning of percepts. In contrast, moral decision-making remained unaffected by psilocybin. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide first evidence that psilocybin has distinct effects on social cognition by enhancing emotional empathy but not moral behavior. Furthermore, together with previous findings, psilocybin appears to promote emotional empathy presumably via activation of serotonin 2A/1A receptors, suggesting that targeting serotonin 2A/1A receptors has implications for potential treatment of dysfunctional social cognition.
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spelling pubmed-55814872017-09-06 Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making Pokorny, Thomas Preller, Katrin H Kometer, Michael Dziobek, Isabel Vollenweider, Franz X Int J Neuropsychopharmacol Regular Research Articles BACKGROUND: Impaired empathic abilities lead to severe negative social consequences and influence the development and treatment of several psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, empathy has been shown to play a crucial role in moral and prosocial behavior. Although the serotonin system has been implicated in modulating empathy and moral behavior, the relative contribution of the various serotonin receptor subtypes is still unknown. METHODS: We investigated the acute effect of psilocybin (0.215 mg/kg p.o.) in healthy human subjects on different facets of empathy and hypothetical moral decision-making using the multifaceted empathy test (n=32) and the moral dilemma task (n=24). RESULTS: Psilocybin significantly increased emotional, but not cognitive empathy compared with placebo, and the increase in implicit emotional empathy was significantly associated with psilocybin-induced changed meaning of percepts. In contrast, moral decision-making remained unaffected by psilocybin. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide first evidence that psilocybin has distinct effects on social cognition by enhancing emotional empathy but not moral behavior. Furthermore, together with previous findings, psilocybin appears to promote emotional empathy presumably via activation of serotonin 2A/1A receptors, suggesting that targeting serotonin 2A/1A receptors has implications for potential treatment of dysfunctional social cognition. Oxford University Press 2017-06-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5581487/ /pubmed/28637246 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyx047 Text en © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CINP. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Regular Research Articles
Pokorny, Thomas
Preller, Katrin H
Kometer, Michael
Dziobek, Isabel
Vollenweider, Franz X
Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title_full Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title_fullStr Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title_full_unstemmed Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title_short Effect of Psilocybin on Empathy and Moral Decision-Making
title_sort effect of psilocybin on empathy and moral decision-making
topic Regular Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28637246
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyx047
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