Elsevier

Neuroscience

Volume 167, Issue 3, 19 May 2010, Pages 709-715
Neuroscience

Cognitive Neuroscience
Research Paper
Estrogen modulates inhibitory control in healthy human females: evidence from the stop-signal paradigm

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2010.02.029Get rights and content

Abstract

Animal studies point to a role of estrogen in explaining gender differences in striatal dopaminergic functioning, but evidence from human studies is still lacking. Given that dopamine is crucial for controlling and organizing goal-directed behavior, estrogen may have a specific impact on cognitive control functions, such as the inhibition of prepotent responses. We compared the efficiency of inhibitory control (as measured by the stop-signal task) in young women across the three phases of their menstrual cycle (salivary estradiol and progesterone concentrations were assessed) and in young men. Women were less efficient in inhibiting prepotent responses in their follicular phase, which is associated with higher estradiol levels and with higher dopamine turnover rates, than in their luteal or menstruation phase. Likewise, women showed less efficient inhibitory control than men in their follicular phase but not in their luteal or menstruation phase. Our results are consistent with models assuming that the over-supply of striatal dopamine in the follicular phase weakens inhibitory pathways, thus leading to enhanced competition between responses. We conclude that gender differences in response inhibition are variable and state dependent but not structural.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixteen young healthy women, aged 19 to 28 years (mean age, 23.14±3.3) years, with a mean intelligence quotient (IQ) of 114.8±7.1, and sixteen young healthy men, aged 19 to 28 years (mean age, 23.15±4.3 years), with a mean IQ of 115.6±7.4, were compensated for their participation.

Women served in three experimental sessions held on three different days according to the phases of their menstrual cycle (menstruation, follicular, and luteal session). The menstruation session was held when the

Results

No significant group differences were obtained for age (t30=−0.113, P=0.91) and intelligence (t30=0.32, P=0.75).

Discussion

Our findings show that inhibitory control, as measured by a stop-signal task, varies across the menstrual cycle of healthy human females. In particular, women show a comparatively longer SSRT in their FP, which is associated with higher levels of estradiol, higher DA turnover rates, and higher D2 receptor densities (Fernandez-Ruiz et al., 1991, Pazos et al., 1985, Bazzett and Becker, 1994, Di Paolo, 1994) than in the other two phases of their menstrual cycle. Importantly, there was no evidence

Acknowledgments

The research of Lorenza S. Colzato and Wery P. M. van den Wildenberg is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

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      Importantly to our scopes, this effect did not interact with the emotional content of distractors. Sex hormones are being related to impulsivity and risk-taking (for a review, see Kurath and Mata, 2018), higher estradiol levels being associated with less response inhibition (Colzato and Hertsig, 2010; Protopopescu et al., 2005), which could lead to shorter reaction times and the increase of errors during the task. In fact, behavioral effects have been steadily reported in the follicular phase (Kumar et al., 2013; Souza et al., 2012; Yamazaki and Tamura, 2017), and, important to our study, even when PMS is discarded (Hoyer et al., 2013).

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