Intranasal oxytocin improves interoceptive accuracy and heart-beat evoked potentials in a cardiac interoceptive task

Background Interoception represents perception of the internal bodily state which is closely associated with social/emotional processing and physical health in humans. Understanding the mechanism underlying interoceptive processing, particularly its modulation, is thus of great importance. Given overlap between oxytocinergic pathways and interoceptive signaling substrates in both peripheral visceral organs and the brain, intranasal oxytocin administration is a promising approach for modulating interoceptive processing. Methods In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-subject design, 80 healthy male participants were recruited to perform a cardiac interoceptive task during electroencephalograph (EEG) and electrocardiograph (ECG) recording to examine whether intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin can modulate interoceptive processing. We also collected data in a resting state to examine whether we could replicate previous findings. Results Results: showed that in the interoceptive task oxytocin increased interoceptive accuracy at the behavioral level which was paralleled by larger heartbeat-evoked potential amplitudes on the neural level. Heartbeat-evoked potential amplitudes were found to be positively correlated with interoceptive accuracy across groups. However, there were no significant effects of oxytocin on EEG or ECG during resting-state. Conclusions These findings suggest that oxytocin may only have a facilitatory effect on interoceptive processing during task-based conditions. Our findings not only provide new insights into the modulation of interoceptive processing via targeting the oxytocinergic system but also provide proof of concept evidence for the therapeutic potential of intranasal oxytocin in mental disorders with dysfunctional interoception. Clinical Trials Registration Registry name: UESTC-neuSCAN-83 URL: https://register.clinicaltrials.gov/prs/app/action/ViewOrUnrelease?uid=U0002QSK%ts=14%sid=S000BB9A%cx=-xxsuzb Registration number: NCT05245708