Synchrony in social groups may confer significant evolutionary advantages by improving group cohesion and social interaction. However, the neurobiological mechanisms translating social synchrony into refined social information transmission between interacting individuals are still elusive. In two successively conducted experiments involving a total of 306 healthy volunteers, we explored the involvement of the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) in reciprocal social interaction. First, we show that synchronous social interactions evoke heightened endogenous OXT release in dyadic partners. In a second step, we examined the consequences of elevated OXT concentrations on emotion transmission by intranasally administering synthetic OXT before recording emotional expressions. Intriguingly, our data demonstrate that the subjects’ facial and vocal expressiveness of fear and happiness is enhanced after OXT compared with placebo administration. Collectively, our findings point to a central role of social synchrony in facilitating reciprocal communication between individuals via heightened OXT signaling. Elevated OXT concentrations among synchronized individuals seem to augment the partners’ emotional expressiveness, thereby contributing to improved transmission of emotional information in social communication.

Nicotine causes dose-dependent alterations in accuracy on the differential-reinforcement of low-rate responding (DRL) 29.5-s schedule in rats. The current investigation evaluated whether nicotineassociated contextual cues can produce nicotine-like perturbations in DRL-schedule performance in the absence of nicotine. Nicotine and saline administrations occurred just prior to DRL 29.5-s schedule responding for sucrose solution, and two different experimental contexts (differentiated by visual, olfactory, and tactile cues) were utilized. All subjects (N = 16) experienced two consecutive daily sessions of DRL-schedule responding per day. The experimental group (n = 8) was exposed to saline immediately prior to the first session and 0.3mg/kg nicotine before the second session, and the context was changed between sessions. This sequence of saline and then nicotine administration, paired with two reliable contexts, persisted for 12 consecutive days and successive nicotine administrations corresponded with increasingly poorer performance on the DRL 29.5-s schedule. No nicotine was administered for days 13-20 during context testing, and the nicotine-associated context produced response disinhibition on the DRL schedule. Two control groups were included in the design; subjects in one control group (n = 4) received saline in each context to verify that the contexts themselves were not exerting control over operant responding. To assess how explicit and nonexplicit pairings of nicotine and contextual cues influenced DRL behavior, subjects in a second control group (n = 4) were given nicotine prior to the second session, but the contexts were not altered between sessions. The results from this experiment suggest that environmental stimuli associated with nicotine exposure can come to elicit nicotine-induced performance decrements on a DRL 29.5-s schedule.

Abstract. S. Brent Plate's introductory essay orients the reader to the academic move toward material text studies, a wide range of research questions and pedagogical practices that includes attention to the history of the book, book technologies, the social habits of readership especially in relation to print culture, and issues raised in media studies about differences in verbal communication.

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One of three short companion essays to Terry Shoemaker's “World Religion and Fake News: A Pedagogical Response in an Age of Post‐Truth,” published in this issue of the journal.