Oxytocin Effect on Attention Inhibition

An Eye-tracking Study to Investigate Oxytocin Effect on Attention Inhibition

Status

Completed

Phases

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT03486925

Enrollment

Registered

2018-04-03

Start date

2017-12-19

Completion date

2018-08-28

Last updated

2019-03-04

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Healthy

Keywords

oxytocin, eye-tracking, attention inhibition

Brief summary

Effects of intranasal oxytocin (24IU) on cognitive control of attention

Detailed description

The cognitive control of attention towards neutral and emotional stimuli represents a key functional domain and disruptions in this domain have been associated with a range of psychiatric disorders. Saccadic eye movement tasks have been used to assess individual differences in the cognitive control of attention and alterations in psychiatric disorders. Recent evidence suggests that the hypothalamic neuropeptide Oxytocin (OXT) may modulate attention allocation and regulation. To this end the present randomized between-subject placebo-controlled experiment examined whether intranasal OXT modulates behavior in an eye-tracking saccade / anti-saccade paradigm in healthy male subjects. The paradigm used non-social (neutral shape) as well as social (happy, sad, angry, fear, and neutral faces) stimuli to explore emotion-specific effects of OXT.

Interventions

DRUGoxytocin treatment

intranasal administration of oxytocin (24IU)

DRUGplacebo treatment

intranasal administration of placebo

Study design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

BASIC_SCIENCE

Masking

DOUBLE (Subject, Investigator)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

MALE

Age

18 Years to 30 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* Male, healthy participants * Non smokers

Exclusion criteria

* Previous or current medical, psychiatric, neurological disorder * Regular medication * Use of any psychoactive substances in the 24 hours before experiment * Contra-indications for oxytocin * Contra-indications for eye-tracking data acquisition

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
emotion-specific saccade latencies	45 minutes - 100 minutes after treatment	comparison between emotion-specific saccade latencies between the treatment groups (in milliseconds)
emotion-specific error rates	45 minutes - 100 minutes after treatment	comparison between the emotion-specific ratio of unsuccessful anti-saccades between the treatment groups.

Countries

China

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026