four; Fig. 3C,D). The best FFA, rACC, and vlPFC showed a
four; Fig. 3C,D). The right FFA, rACC, and vlPFC showed a similar interaction (Table four).Animal research have shown that oxytocin is involved in regulating social interactions, mediating enhanced strategy behavior toward conspecifics (Lim and Young, 2006). Oxytocin can also be implicated in inhibition of fearrelated processes (Debiec, 2005). It has been hypothesized that these two effects are functionally connected and that oxytocin mediates its prosocial behavior partly via suppression of avoidancerelated processes (Lim and Young, 2006). 1 possibility is the fact that oxytocin influences fearrelated social stimuli more than fearrelated nonsocial stimuli. Even though social cues are mainly conveyed by means of the olfactory technique in rodents, in which the oxytocin technique has been most extensively studied, in humans social cues rely on the visual system, as exemplified by face processing (Haxby et al 2002; Adolphs et al 2005; Lim and Young, 2006). Furthermore, simply because socialaffective responses are modified with respect to our practical experience of other individuals (Singer et alJ Neurosci. Author manuscript; readily available in PMC 2009 February 24.Petrovic et al.Page2006), we conjectured that oxytocin might modulate this dimension. This suggests that oxytocin effects on fearrelated social stimuli must be evident in attenuated affective ratings and attenuated brain responses inside regions processing socially relevant stimuli (i.e faces). The most beneficial characterization of postconditioning transform in 
affective ratings and their modulation by oxytocin is the fact that mediated by evaluative conditioning (De Houwer et al 200). Our demonstration of an attenuation in affective ratings for fearrelated faces by oxytocin is in line together with the hypothesis that oxytocinmediated prosocial processes involve a suppression of aversive associations to particular stimuli (Lim and Young, 2006). PubMed ID:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12678751 It has been shown previously that oxytocin has prosocial effects in humans, as in oxytocin treatment influencing trust behavior in financial games (Kosfeld et al 2005), modulating inferences regarding others’ mental states (Domes et al 2007a), and decreasing pressure in social interactions (Pitman et al 993; Heinrichs et al 2003; Domes et al 2007a). Importantly, in our study, oxytocin had no effect on mood, in line with preceding studies (Pitman et al 993; Heinrichs et al 2003, 2004; Kirsch et al 2005; Kosfeld et al 2005; Domes et al 2007a), but did influence on acquired negative affective ratings associated to social stimuli. We observed a important impact of oxytocin on the amygdala, a area implicated in fear processing, like fear learning (Phelps, 2006). The amygdala also plays a key role in processing social cues for example path of eye gaze, manifest in an enhanced amygdala response to direct compared with averted gaze (Kawashima et al 999; George et al 200; Haxby et al 2002; Adolphs et al 2005). These two dimensions, fear and social cue processing, interact in the amygdala as when a face signals threat (Vuilleumier and Pourtois, 2007) and in judgment of untrustworthiness (Winston et al 2002). The fact that the amygdala expresses higher concentrations of oxytocin receptors (Insel and Shapiro, 992; Veinante and FreundMercier, 997; Huber et al 2005), which act by inhibiting activity within the basolateral amygdala MK-1439 manufacturer through the influence of GABA (Huber et al 2005), offers a probably mechanisms by which oxytocin could possibly induce particular effects on socially associated fear (Debiec, 2005). Two preceding human research have reported lowered fearr.