Effects of buprenorphine on responses to social stimuli in healthy adults

In addition to its classical role in mediating responses to pain, the opioid system is strongly implicated in the regulation of social behavior. In young laboratory animals, low doses of opioid analgesic drugs reduce responses to isolation distress and increase play behavior. However, little is known about how opioid drugs affect responses to social stimuli in humans. Here we examined the effects of buprenorphine, a mu-opioid partial agonist and kappa-antagonist, on three dimensions of social processing: (i) responses to simulated social rejection, (ii) attention to emotional facial expressions, and (iii) emotional responses to images with and without social content. Healthy adults (N=36) attended two sessions during which they received either placebo or 0.2mg sublingual buprenorphine in randomized order, under double-blind conditions. Ninety minutes after drug administration, they completed three behavioral tasks: (i) a virtual ball-toss game in which they were first included and then excluded by the other players; (ii) an attention task in which they were shown pairs of faces (one emotional and one neutral), while the direction of their gazes was recorded using electrooculography, and (iii) a picture-viewing task, in which they rated standardized images with and without social content. During the ball-toss game, buprenorphine decreased perceived social rejection. During the attention task, the drug reduced initial attention to fearful facial expressions, without influencing attention to angry, happy, or sad faces. Finally, during the picture-viewing task, buprenorphine increased ratings of positivity of images with social content without affecting ratings of nonsocial images. These results suggest that even at low doses, opioid analgesic drugs reduce responses to some types of negative social stimuli while enhancing positive responses to social stimuli. This provides further support for the role of the opioid system in mediating responses to social rejection and social reward.