title: The Effect of Oxytocin on Third-Party Altruistic Decisions in Unfair Situations: An fMRI Study.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, 53127, Germany.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.|Department of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Scheele
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.|Department of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.|Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation, School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in Medicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, 610054, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, 53127, Germany.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Voos
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, 53127, Germany.
authors.forename: Bastian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: David
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.|Department of Medical Psychology, University Hospital Bonn, 53105, Germany.
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hurlemann
authors.affiliation: Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, 53127, Germany.|Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, 53127, Germany.
authors.forename: Bernd
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Weber
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D000533:Altruism; D001007:Anxiety; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010121:Oxytocin / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000378:metabolism*; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010121:Oxytocin
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