143. Effects of Oxytocin on Neural Response to Facial Emotion Recognition in Schizophrenia

Abstract

Objective: Impaired facial emotion recognition is widely reported in schizophrenia. Previous studies have examined the effect of neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) on facial emotion recognition in healthy volunteers. However, its effect on facial emotion recognition deficits seen in schizophrenia is not well explored. Methods: 12 male patients (age = 31.08 +/‐ 7.61 years, education = 14.50 +/‐ 2.20 years) participated in this single blind, counterbalanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study. All participants underwent three fMRI scans; one at baseline, one each after single dose 24 IU intranasal OXT and intranasal placebo. The order of administration of OXT and placebo were counterbalanced and subject was blind to the drug administered. Participants performed a facial emotion recognition task presented in a block design with 6 alternating blocks of faces and shapes. The faces depicted happy, angry or fearful emotions. The images were preprocessed and analyzed using SPM 12. First level contrasts comparing recognition of emotions and shapes were modelled at individual subject level. A group level analysis was performed using the contrasts generated at the first level to compare the effects of intranasal OXT and placebo. The results were thresholded at uncorrected p<0.001 with a cluster size of 6 voxels. Results: Compared to placebo, intranasal OXT attenuated activity in inferior temporal, fusiform and parahippocampal gyri (BA 20), premotor cortex (BA 6), middle frontal gyrus (BA 10) and anterior cingulate gyrus (BA 24) and enhanced activity in the middle occipital gyrus (BA 18), inferior occipital gyrus (BA 19), and superior temporal gyrus (BA 22). There were no significant differences between the conditions on the accuracy scores of emotion recognition between baseline (77.3 +/‐ 18.38), oxytocin (82.63 +/‐ 10.92) or Placebo (76.62 +/‐ 22.67). Conclusion: Our results provide further evidence to the modulatory effect of oxytocin in patients with schizophrenia. Single dose oxytocin resulted in significant changes in activity of brain regions involved in emotion processing.