One of the most robust effects of intranasal oxytocin treatment is its enhancement of emotional empathy responses across cultures to individuals displaying emotions in realistic contexts in the Multifaceted Empathy Task (MET). However, it is not established if this effect of oxytocin on emotional empathy is due to altered visual attention toward different components of the stimulus pictures or an enhanced empathic response. In the current randomized placebo-controlled within-subject experiment on 40 healthy male individuals, we both attempted a further replication of emotional empathy enhancement by intranasal oxytocin (24 IU) and used eye-tracking measures to determine if this was associated by altered visual attention toward different components of the picture stimuli (background context, human face, and body posture). Results replicated previous findings of enhanced emotional empathy in response to both negative and positive stimuli and that this was associated with an increased proportion of time viewing the faces of humans in the pictures and a corresponding decrease in that toward the rest of the body and/or background context. Overall, our findings suggest that enhanced emotional empathy following oxytocin administration is due to increased attention to the faces of others displaying emotions and away from other contextual and social cues. Clinical Trial Registration: www.ClinicalTrials.gov Oxytocin Modulates Eye Gaze Behavior During Social Processing; registration ID: NCT03293511; URL: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03293511.

中文翻译：

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催产素促进情绪同理心与在情绪环境中对个人面部的注视增加有关

鼻内催产素治疗最强大的效果之一是它增强了跨文化对在多方面移情任务 (MET) 中在现实环境中表现出情绪的个人的情绪移情反应。然而，尚未确定催产素对情绪移情的这种影响是否是由于对刺激图片不同组成部分的视觉注意力的改变或移情反应的增强。在目前对 40 名健康男性进行的随机安慰剂对照受试者内实验中，我们都尝试通过鼻内催产素 (24 IU) 进一步复制情绪同理心增强，并使用眼动追踪措施来确定这是否与视觉注意力改变有关对图片刺激的不同组成部分（背景上下文、人脸和身体姿势）。结果重复了先前的发现，即对消极和积极刺激做出反应时情绪同理心增强，这与查看图片中人脸的时间比例增加有关，而对身体其他部位和/或背景上下文。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，在使用催产素后增强的情感同理心是由于更多地关注他人表现出的情绪的面孔，并远离其他背景和社会线索。临床试验注册：www.ClinicalTrials.gov 催产素在社交过程中调节眼睛凝视行为；注册号：NCT03293511；网址：https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03293511。