Oxytocin and Interpersonal Motor Resonance

Summary

Among different social cues from the environment, the eyes constitute a very salient source for initiating social interaction or communication. Interestingly, previous work from our (Prinsen et al., 2016) and other labs demonstrated that direct eye contact between two individuals can readily evoke an increased propensity to 'mirror' other peoples' actions. Particularly, using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), the investigators showed that mirror-motor mapping at the level of the primary motor cortex (M1), also known as "interpersonal motor resonance" (IMR), is significantly increased upon the observation of actions accompanied by direct eye contact, compared to the observation of actions accompanied by averted eye gaze. With the present study, the investigators aim to investigate the role of eye contact on IMR further, and in particular, explore whether administration of the 'prosocial' neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) can influence eye-contact induced IMR. In general, OT is known to play an important role in promoting prosocial behavior and the perception of socially-relevant stimuli, such as eye gaze. To date however, the link between OT and IMR is less clear.

Timeline

Start

2016-01

Primary completion

2016-08

Completion

2016-12

Publications

• Background Prinsen J, Bernaerts S, Wang Y, de Beukelaar TT, Cuypers K, Swinnen SP, Alaerts K. Direct eye contact enhances mirroring of others' movements: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Neuropsychologia. 2017 Jan 27;95:111-118. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.12.011. Epub 2016 Dec 8.

Drugs

Indications

No indication recorded.