Original articleTestosterone Reduces Unconscious Fear but Not Consciously Experienced Anxiety: Implications for the Disorders of Fear and Anxiety
Section snippets
Subjects
Participants were 16 right-handed, healthy young women, ranging in age from 19 to 26 years. Only women were recruited because the parameters (quantity and time course) for inducing effects in men after a single sublingual administration of testosterone are unknown (cf. Tuiten et al 2000). The testosterone-placebo testing days were run 2 days apart but both in the early follicular phase of the menstrual cycle when endogenous levels of hormones are low and most stable (Bjork et al 2001). The
Awareness Checks
There was no evidence of recognition of emotional valence during masked presentation by subjective check. For analyzing subjects’ performance on the objective check, we initially scrutinized possible effects of Order and Drug to see whether repeated measuring or testosterone had influenced perceptual thresholds in any way. There was no evidence for Order [Z(1,15) = −.22; ns] and Drug [Z(1,15) = −.13; ns] having the slightest effect on perceptual performance. This allowed us to collapse the
Discussion
The present study investigated the effects of testosterone on emotional responses to unconsciously processed fearful faces and consciously experienced states of anxiety. Concurring with fMRI and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) findings in healthy volunteers that involved emotional responses to unseen facial threat (Whalen et al 1998; van Honk et al 2002a), a vigilant emotional response to the masked fearful facial expression was observed after placebo administration (Figure 2
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