The mechanisms underlying the role of oxytocin (OT) as a regulator of social behavior in mammals are only partly understood. Recently, it has been proposed that OT increases the salience of social stimuli. We carried out a randomized, double-blind, cross-over study of the effects of OT on binocular rivalry, a visual phenomenon underpinned by the interplay of excitation and inhibition in the cortex. A final sample of 45 participants viewed images of social stimuli (faces with different emotional expressions) and non-social stimuli (houses and Gabor patches). We demonstrate a robust effect that intranasal OT increases the salience of human faces in binocular rivalry, such that dominance durations of faces are longer—this effect is not modulated by the facial expression. We tentatively show that OT treatment increases dominance durations for non-social stimuli. Our results lend support to the social salience hypothesis of OT, and in addition offer provisional support for the role of OT in influencing excitation-inhibition balance in the brain.

催产素 (OT) 作为哺乳动物社会行为调节剂的作用机制仅被部分了解。最近，有人提出 OT 会增加社会刺激的显着性。我们对 OT 对双眼竞争的影响进行了一项随机、双盲、交叉研究，这是一种以皮层兴奋和抑制相互作用为基础的视觉现象。45 名参与者的最终样本查看了社会刺激（具有不同情绪表达的面孔）和非社会刺激（房屋和 Gabor 补丁）的图像。我们证明了一种强大的效果，即鼻内 OT 增加了双眼竞争中人脸的显着性，使得面部的优势持续时间更长——这种效果不受面部表情的调节。我们初步表明 OT 治疗增加了非社会刺激的优势持续时间。我们的研究结果支持 OT 的社会显着性假设，此外还为 OT 在影响大脑兴奋-抑制平衡中的作用提供了临时支持。