Selective attention to emotional cues and emotion recognition in healthy subjects: the role of mineralocorticoid receptor stimulation.

Rationale: Selective attention toward emotional cues and emotion recognition of facial expressions are important aspects of social cognition. Stress modulates social cognition through cortisol, which acts on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR) in the brain.

Objectives: We examined the role of MR activation on attentional bias toward emotional cues and on emotion recognition.