The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has many potential social benefits. For example, intranasal administration of OT appears to trigger caregiving behavior and to improve the recognition of emotional facial expressions. But the mechanism for these effects is not yet clear. Recent findings relating OT to action imitation and to the visual processing of the eye region of faces point to mimicry as a mechanism through which OT improves processing of emotional expression. To test the hypothesis that increased levels of OT in the brain enhance facial mimicry, 60 healthy male participants were administered, in a double-blind between-subjects design, 24 international units (IUs) of OT or placebo (PLA) through nasal spray. Facial mimicry and emotion judgments were recorded in response to movie clips depicting changing facial expressions. As expected, facial mimicry was increased in the OT group, but effects were strongest for angry infant faces. These findings provide further evidence for the importance of OT in social cognitive skills, and suggest that facial mimicry mediates the effects of OT on improved emotion recognition.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 37. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 November 2020.
All research outputs
#1,407,936
of 34,400,738 outputs
Outputs from Hormones & Behavior
#209
of 2,584 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#18,225
of 344,408 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Hormones & Behavior
#3
of 34 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,400,738 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,584 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 15.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 344,408 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 34 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
