Facilitation of social attraction and bonding by the evolutionarily conserved neuropeptide oxytocin is well-established in female mammals. However, accumulating behavioral evidence suggests that oxytocin may have evolved sex-specific functional roles in the domain of human social cognition. A critical question is how oxytocin differentially modulates neural processing of social information in men and women, leading to divergent behavioral responses. Here we show that intranasal oxytocin treatment produces sex-and valence-dependent increases in amygdala activation when women view individuals identified as praising others but in men those who criticize them. Women subsequently show increased liking for the faces of these individuals, whereas in men it is reduced. Thus, oxytocin may act differentially via the amygdala to enhance the salience of positive social attributes in women but negative ones in men. We hypothesize that oxytocin may have evolved different but complementary roles to help ensure successful reproduction by encouraging mothers to promote a prosocial rearing environment for offspring and fathers to protect against antisocial influences.T he hypothalamic neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) plays a key role in promoting maternal behavior and mother-infant bonding in mammals (1) as well as pair bonds with males in monogamous species (2). Recent studies in both monkeys and humans have suggested that it has not only evolved a more extensive role in social cognition in female primates but also become progressively used by males in this domain (3). Although OXT appears to facilitate both salience and motivational aspects of social cues in both sexes (3, 4), there is increasing evidence that it may often produce opposite effects in these domains in men and women (5-7), raising the intriguing possibility that it has evolved some sex-specific functions at both neural and behavioral levels. In particular, behavioral studies have reported that whereas OXT tends to facilitate positive social judgments (7), social approach (8), kinship recognition (5), and altruism (9) in women, in men it can facilitate negative social judgments (7), social avoidance (10), competitor recognition (5), and selfishness (9). Similarly, in response to couple conflict, OXT decreased sympathetic activity and arousal in women but increased them in men (6). The neural basis of these opposing sex-dependent behavioral effects of OXT has not, however, been established.Previous research has shown that the amygdala has different responses to positive and negative valence social information in men and women (11) and also may be a critical target for sex-specific functional effects of OXT. The amygdala has a sexually dimorphic distribution and expression of OXT receptors in nonprimate mammals (12, 13), and separate OXT-application studies in humans have indicated that there may be differential amygdala reactivity to fearful faces and fearful/threatening scenes in men (14, 15) and women (16,17). Importantly, this region plays a key role in processing so...

In male Caucasian subjects, learning is facilitated by receipt of social compared with non-social feedback, and the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) facilitates this effect. In this study, we have first shown a cultural difference in that male Chinese subjects actually perform significantly worse in the same reinforcement associated learning task with social (emotional faces) compared with non-social feedback. Nevertheless, in two independent double-blind placebo (PLC) controlled between-subject design experiments we found OXT still selectively facilitated learning with social feedback. Similar to Caucasian subjects this OXT effect was strongest with feedback using female rather than male faces. One experiment performed in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that during the response, but not feedback phase of the task, OXT selectively increased activity in the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus and putamen during the social feedback condition, and functional connectivity between the amygdala and insula and caudate. Therefore, OXT may be increasing the salience and reward value of anticipated social feedback. In the PLC group, response times and state anxiety scores during social feedback were associated with signal changes in these same regions but not in the OXT group. OXT may therefore have also facilitated learning by reducing anxiety in the social feedback condition. Overall our results provide the first evidence for cultural differences in social facilitation of learning per se, but a similar selective enhancement of learning with social feedback under OXT. This effect of OXT may be associated with enhanced responses and functional connectivity in emotional memory and reward processing regions.

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This study examined the relation between long-term music training and child development based on 250 Chinese elementary school students' academic development of first language (L1), second language (L2), and mathematics. We found that musician children outperformed non-musician children only on musical achievement and second language development. Additionally, although music training appeared to be correlated with children's final academic development of L1, L2, and mathematics, it did not independently contribute to the development of L1 or mathematical skills. Our findings suggest caution in interpreting the positive findings on the non-musical cognitive benefits of music learning.

EEG and fMRI recordings measure the functional activity of multiple coherent networks distributed in the cerebral cortex. Identifying network interaction from the complementary neuroelectric and hemodynamic signals may help to explain the complex relationships between different brain regions. In this paper, multimodal functional network connectivity (mFNC) is proposed for the fusion of EEG and fMRI in network space. First, functional networks (FNs) are extracted using spatial independent component analysis (ICA) in each modality separately. Then the interactions among FNs in each modality are explored by Granger causality analysis (GCA). Finally, fMRI FNs are matched to EEG FNs in the spatial domain using network-based source imaging (NESOI). Investigations of both synthetic and real data demonstrate that mFNC has the potential to reveal the underlying neural networks of each modality separately and in their combination. With mFNC, comprehensive relationships among FNs might be unveiled for the deep exploration of neural activities and metabolic responses in a specific task or neurological state.