The way oxytocin affects people's sleep is said to be similar to the way it affects their relationships; current evidence from many scientific studies has concluded that oxytocin attenuates amygdalar hyper - responsivity to
negatively valences emotional stimuli (Kirsch et al. 2005)[3].
The reactivity of the amygala to
negatively valenced stimuli (including angry or fearful faces) is increased in psychiatric syndromes with elevated risk for reactive aggression (Blair, 2012), including intermittent explosive disorder (IED)(Coccaro et al., 2007), borderline personality disorder (Herpertz et al., 2001; Minzenberg et al., 2007; Silbersweig et al., 2007) and children with conduct problems (Sterzer et al., 2005).
Rather than using undifferentiated positively - and
negatively -
valenced stimuli, we created video clips depicting each of the primary emotions, and we also asked participants to rate their own feelings after watching the video clips.