Oxytocin Reduces Subjective Fear in Naturalistic Social Contexts via Enhancing Top-Down Middle Cingulate Amygdala Regulation and Brain-Wide Fear Representations.

ABSTRACT: Accumulating evidence from animal and human studies suggests a fear-regulating potential of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT), yet the clinical translation into novel interventions for pathological fear requires a behavioral and neurofunctional characterization under close-to-real-life conditions. Here, we combined a naturalistic fMRI-design that elicited strong and immersive fear experience in social and non-social contexts with a preregistered between-subjects randomized double-blind placebo-controlled intranasal OT trial (24 IU, n  =  67 healthy men). OT selectively reduced subjective fear in social contexts but not in non-social contexts. On the neural level OT enhanced left middle cingulate cortex (lMCC) activation and its functional connectivity with the contralateral amygdala, with bot

SUBMITTER: Fu K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12520527 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature