The role of oxytocin in modulating self–other distinction in human brain: a pharmacological fMRI study

Abstract Self–other distinction is crucial for human interaction. Although with conflicting results, studies have found that oxytocin (OT) sharpens the self–other perceptual boundary. However, little is known about the effect of OT on self–other perception, especially its neural basis. Moreover, it is unclear whether OT influences self–other discrimination when the other is a child or an adult. This double-blind, placebo-controlled study investigated the effect of OT on self-face perception at the behavioral and neural levels. For the stimuli, we morphed participants’ faces and child or adult strangers’ faces, resulting in 4 conditions. After treatment with either OT or placebo, participants reported whether a stimulus resembled themselves while being scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results showed that people judged adult-morphed faces better than child-morphed faces. Moreover, fMRI results showed that the OT group exhibited increased activity in visual areas and the inferior frontal gyrus for self-faces. This difference was more pronounced in the adult-face condition. In multivariate fMRI and region of interest analyses, better performance in the OT group indicated that OT increased self–other distinction, especially for adult faces and in the left hemisphere. Our study shows a significant effect of OT on self-referential processes, proving the potential effect of OT on a left hemisphere self-network.