Naltrexone alters responses to social and physical warmth: implications for social bonding.

ABSTRACT: Socially warm experiences, when one feels connected to others, have been linked with physical warmth. Opioids, hypothesized to support social bonding with close others and, separately, physical warmth, may underlie both experiences. In order to test this hypothesis, 80 participants were randomly assigned to the opioid antagonist, naltrexone or placebo before neural and emotional responses to social and physical warmth were collected. Social and physical warmth led to similar increases in ventral striatum (VS) and middle-insula (MI) activity. Further, feelings of social connection were positively related to neural activity to social warmth. However, naltrexone (vs placebo) disrupted these effects by (i) reducing VS and MI activity to social and physical warmth, (ii) erasing the subjective e

SUBMITTER: Inagaki TK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6545530 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature