Oxytocin effects on eye movements in schizophrenia

Lilla Porffy (1) , Victoria Bell (2) , Antoine Coutrot (3, 4) , Rebekah Wigton (5, 2) , Teresa d'Oliveira (1) , Isabelle Mareschal (6) , Sukhwinder S Shergill (1)

1 Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London
2 HMS - Harvard Medical School [Boston]
3 LS2N - Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes
4 LS2N - équipe IPI - Image Perception Interaction
5 BIDMC - Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center [Boston]
6 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London

Background: Individuals with schizophrenia have difficulty in extracting salient information from faces. Eye-tracking studies have reported that these individuals demonstrate reduced exploratory viewing behaviour (i.e.reduced number offixations and shorter scan paths) compared to healthy controls. Oxytocin has previouslybeen demonstrated to exert pro-social effects and modulate eye gaze during face exploration. In this study, wetested whether oxytocin has an effect on visual attention in patients with schizophrenia. Methods: Nineteen male participants with schizophrenia received intranasal oxytocin 40UI or placebo in adouble-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover fashion during two visits separated by seven days. They engagedin a free-viewing eye-tracking task, exploring images of Caucasian men displaying angry, happy, and neutralemotional expressions; and control images of animate and inanimate stimuli. Eye-tracking parameters included:total number offixations, mean duration offixations, dispersion, and saccade amplitudes. Results: We found a main effect of treatment, whereby oxytocin increased the total number offixations, dispersion, and saccade amplitudes, while decreasing the duration offixations compared to placebo. This effect, how-ever, was non-specific to facial stimuli. When restricting the analysis to facial images only, we found the sameeffect. In addition, oxytocin modulatedfixation rates in the eye and nasion regions. Discussion: This is thefirst study to explore the effects of oxytocin on eye gaze in schizophrenia. Oxytocin had enhanced exploratory viewing behaviour in response to both facial and inanimate control stimuli. We suggest thatthe acute administration of intranasal oxytocin may have the potential to enhance visual attention inschizophrenia.

Mots clés: Oxytocin; Visual Attention; Eye-tracking; Schizophrenia; Social Cognition

Domaines: Sciences cognitives; Psychiatrie et santé mentale

Lilla Porffy, Victoria Bell, Antoine Coutrot, Rebekah Wigton, Teresa d'Oliveira, et al.. Oxytocin effects on eye movements in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 2019. ⟨hal-02404499⟩