F77. OXYTOCIN ENHANCES VISUAL ATTENTION TO FACIAL STIMULI IN PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA: EVIDENCE FROM AN EYE-TRACKING STUDY

摘要

BackgroundDeficits in social cognition often develop during the prodromal stages of psychosis, remain stable over the course of the illness, and have a dramatic impact on daily functioning (Fett et al., 2011). Social cue processing, particularly face perception, plays a critical role in social cognitive functioning. Patients with schizophrenia struggle to extract information from faces and interpret facial expressions (Kohler et al., 2010). These deficits may be explained by restricted visual attention. Indeed, eye-tracking studies have demonstrated that people with schizophrenia show reduced exploratory behaviour (i.e. reduced number of fixations and longer fixation durations) in response to facial stimuli compared to healthy controls (e.g. Manor et al., 1999). Oxytocin has been demonstrated to exert pro-social effects on behaviour and modulate eye gaze during perception of faces. In the present study, we tested whether the neuropeptide, oxytocin, has a compensatory effect on visual processing of human faces.