Links for Keyword: Hormones & Behavior

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For Some, Psychiatric Trouble May Start in Thyroid

By HARRIET BROWN In patients with depression, anxiety and other psychiatric problems, doctors often find abnormal blood levels of thyroid hormone. Treating the problem, they have found, can lead to improvements in mood, memory and cognition. Now researchers are exploring a somewhat controversial link between minor, or subclinical, thyroid problems and some patients’ psychiatric difficulties. After reviewing the literature on subclinical hypothyroidism and mood, Dr. Russell Joffe, a psychiatrist at the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, and colleagues recently concluded that treating the condition, which affects about 2 percent of Americans, could alleviate some patients’ psychiatric symptoms and might even prevent future cognitive decline. Patients with psychiatric symptoms, Dr. Joffe said, “tell us that given thyroid hormones, they get better.” The thyroid, a bow-tie-shaped gland that wraps around the trachea, produces two hormones: thyroxine, or T4, and triiodothyronine, known as T3. These hormones play a role in a surprising range of physical processes, from regulation of body temperature and heartbeat to cognitive functioning. Any number of things can cause the thyroid to malfunction, including exposure to radiation, too much or too little iodine in the diet, medications like lithium, and autoimmune disease. And the incidence of thyroid disease rises with age. Too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroidism) speeds the metabolism, causing symptoms like sweating, palpitations, weight loss and anxiety. Too little (hypothyroidism) can cause physical fatigue, weight gain and sluggishness, as well as depression, inability to concentrate and memory problems. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: The Biology of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 16068 - Posted: 11.22.2011

Single gene can make you appear kinder

by Catherine de Lange How kind you are could be affected by a change in a single gene. What's more, others can tell if you have the gene even if you don't speak a single word. There are several variations of the gene that codes for the receptor for the hormone oxytocin. Aleksandr Kogan at the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues wanted to check whether these variations influence behaviour, since high levels of oxytocin are believed to make people more sociable. Kogan's team asked 116 volunteers to watch 23 silent videos that were 20 seconds long. Each showed a person's response to their partner telling them a story of personal suffering. The volunteers were asked to rate how kind and trustworthy the person in the video appeared to be. People with the so-called GG version of the oxytocin receptor gene were judged to be kinder than those with GA or AA versions. The difference? Those with GG variations used significantly more non-verbal empathetic gestures in their storytelling such as smiling and nodding. Kogan expects that this is what influenced the observers' judgements. Further research will be needed to identify the effect of the different genetic variations on oxytocin levels. Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.111265810 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 15: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 11: Emotions, Aggression, and Stress
Link ID: 16039 - Posted: 11.15.2011

A gland grows itself

By Tina Hesman Saey Researchers have grown a mouse pituitary gland for the first time from embryonic stem cells. Or rather, the pituitary gland grew itself, after Japanese researchers coaxed embryonic stem cells to form the type of tissues that normally surround the gland. The accomplishment, reported online November 9 in Nature, could be the first step toward replacement pituitary glands for people. Self-made glands growing in lab dishes may also help researchers learn how the organs develop inside the body. “There’s a lot in it to be excited about, whether you’re a developmental biologist or interested in clinical applications,” says Sally Camper, a developmental geneticist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Camper has tried, and failed, to coax embryonic stem cells to form pituitary glands. “It’s a gorgeous piece of work, and it’s just really, really exciting,” she says. Scientists have persuaded stem cells to form particular types of tissues before, but growing a whole organ in a lab dish has been an elusive goal, says pediatric endocrinologist Mehul Dattani of the University College London Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. What allowed Yoshiki Sasai of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues to succeed where others have failed is that the group recreated conditions that exist in the part of the brain where the pituitary normally grows. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 16014 - Posted: 11.11.2011

Can Birth Control Affect Memory?

by Marianne English Though research has shown that women are more likely than men to remember the emotional details of an event, there may be another dividing factor when it comes to memory: birth control. Scientists know people's hormones shape how their memories form. For instance, our fight-or-flight hormones influence how the brain encodes a specific memory, with traumatic events making more of an impact than everyday activities. A portion of the brain called the amygdala works on the receiving end of these hormones and is thought to play a central role in making and storing new memories. Birth control works by reducing the amount of estrogen and progesterone in a woman's body to limit ovulation, but it's unclear whether these hormones affect how a person recalls an event. In one study, researchers looked at whether women taking oral contraceptives remembered events from an experiment differently than women with normal menstrual cycles not on birth control. Seventy-two female subjects were recruited for the study, half on the pill and half not. Each group watched variations of a slide show story that involved a young boy being hit by a car. Before and throughout the slide show, researchers collected saliva samples to measure alpha-amylase -- a chemical that signifies a drop or rise in the fight-or-flight hormone norepinephrine, which increases a person's heart rate during emergencies or stressful situations. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 15819 - Posted: 09.20.2011

Fatherhood Decreases Testosterone

by Elizabeth Norton Humans are probably the only species on Earth who nurture their young for 20 years or more. For men in particular, the intensive demands of parenting can come as such a shock that a built-in biological mechanism has evolved to help cope with the change. A new study shows that becoming a father leads to a sharp decline in testosterone, suggesting that although high levels of the hormone may help men win a mate, testosterone-fueled traits such as aggression and competition are less useful when it comes to raising children. Previous research had shown that among new fathers, testosterone levels were lower than in men of the same age who didn't have children. But no study addressed whether parenthood itself was responsible, or whether men who became committed partners and fathers started out with lower levels of the hormone than did their single, footloose friends. To sort out cause and effect, anthropologists Lee Gettler, Christopher Kuzawa, and colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, Philippines, checked testosterone levels in a group of men participating in the ongoing Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. The survey began with a group of some 3000 women who were pregnant in 1983 and followed the general health, nutrition, medical care, and survival of their children; it has since expanded into an intergenerational study of health, education, and sexual behavior as those children grew up and are now having children of their own. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases; Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 15795 - Posted: 09.13.2011

Lack of testes gave castrato superstar headaches

THERE was at least one downside to Farinelli's castration. The operation may have preserved the 18th-century singer's treble voice into adulthood, making him a musical legend, but it also condemned him to a skull deformity that may have affected his mind. Farinelli was exhumed in 2006 so that his skeleton could be studied. Lead investigator Maria Giovanna Belcastro of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy, was able to identify two unusual features. Like those of other castrati, Farinelli's limb bones were unusually long. And the front of his skull had grown inwards in a lumpy mass, in places twice as thick as unaffected bone (Journal of Anatomy, DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2011.01413.x). This is called hyperostosis frontalis interna (HFI). It is thought to be caused by hormonal disorders, particularly too much oestrogen, which explains why it is normally found in post-menopausal women and is rare in men. HFI was thought to be harmless, says Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University in Israel, but is now linked to behavioural disorders, headaches and neurological diseases like Alzheimer's. Though any such symptoms probably would not have affected Farinelli until late in life, Hershkovitz says. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 12: Sex: Evolutionary, Hormonal, and Neural Bases
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 15607 - Posted: 07.26.2011

'Trust Hormone' May Help Curb Symptoms of Devastating Disease

by Elizabeth Norton Life for those with a genetic disease called Prader-Willi syndrome, which affects an estimated one out of 15,000 people, can be challenging both for the patient and his or her family. Sufferers have an insatiable hunger that can lead to life-threatening obesity if access to food is not restricted. And worse, they have behavioral problems akin to autism. Tantrums and tears are common because these patients have difficulty understanding the motives of others and controlling their own emotions. But treatment with the brain hormone oxytocin may help bring both emotions and eating into balance, according to a new study. Several clues pointed to the potential of oxytocin, often thought of as the "trust hormone." Research conducted on the brain tissue donated after death from Prader-Willi patients showed that the hypothalamus (the body's thermostat) has abnormalities in the nerve cells that produce this hormone. Moreover, the hypothalamus releases oxytocin in response to touching, social interactions, relaxation, and trust—all the things people with Prader-Willi syndrome have trouble with. And oxytocin treatments have improved the social skills of autistic patients. Finally, the hormone is thought to contribute to feelings of fullness after eating, "satiety" in scientific parlance. To see whether oxytocin could benefit individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome, endocrinologist Maïthé Tauber of the Children's Hospital in Toulouse, France, and colleagues injected oxytocin or a placebo into the noses of 24 adult patients. The researchers monitored the patients' behavior; they also used cartoon stories to test patients' grasp of social interactions and pictures of faces to see how well they could recognize emotions. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

The Pseudoscience of Hysteria

By KATHRYN HARRISON Readers who can’t identify Jean-Martin Charcot as the name of the French neurologist whose 19th-century experiments with hypnosis influenced Sigmund Freud’s theory of neurosis may yet recognize the work he conducted at the Saltpêtrière Hospital in Paris. Photographs and illustrations of Charcot’s patients, all women suffering hysteria, remain in currency today, 140 years after they were made, if more as curiosities than as clinically valuable documents. Once seen, these images — of, for example, a woman wearing little more than a tangle of bed sheets, her eyes rolled up into her head in either “ecstasy” or “delirium,” or fixed on the invisible object of her “amorous supplication” — are not easily forgotten, let alone dismissed. Poses classified as “passionate attitudes,” they have the disquieting aspect of pornography masquerading as intellectual inquiry. Charcot, as portrayed in Asti Hustvedt’s consistently enthralling “Medical Muses,” focused intently — myopically, one could argue — on using hypnosis to induce hysteria and make “his hysterics, with their bizarre fits and spasms, into ideal medical specimens.” But the provocative behavior of those “specimens” transformed Saltpêtrière into something closer to a carnival than a teaching hospital. As much showman as physician, Charcot gave weekly two-hour lectures to a packed amphitheater, including demonstrations designed to captivate an audience accustomed to staged séances and exhibitions of mesmerism or telepathy. One of Charcot’s students described the dramatic potential of exhibiting hypnotized women: “We can cut them, prick them and burn them, and they feel nothing.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 15460 - Posted: 06.20.2011

Fluorescent fish glows to show feminising chemicals up

FOR people worried about the feminising effect of oestrogen-like chemicals in the water there is now a modern-day equivalent of the canary in the coal mine: a genetically modified fish in a bowl. Male fish exposed to oestrogen have delayed sperm development and grow smaller testes. Some industrial chemicals, such as bisphenol A, mimic oestrogen, but little is known about how the effects of different oestrogen-like chemicals add up in water. To find out, Xueping Chen and colleagues at Vitargent, a biotechnology company in Hong Kong, have created a genetically engineered fish that glows green when it is exposed to oestrogen-like chemicals. Chen's team took the green fluorescent protein gene from jellyfish and spliced it into the genome of the medaka fish, Oryzias melastigma, next to a gene that detects oestrogen. Chemicals that have oestrogen-like activity cause the fish to express the modified gene, making them glow. When the team tested the fish at eight sites around Hong Kong, they found that some chemicals that showed weak or no oestrogenic activity, including UV filters used in sunscreen, had combined in water to amplify or create an oestrogenic effect. The work is as yet unpublished. William Price of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, warns the approach does not detect a biological response. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

The Weakness That Wouldn’t Go Away

By LISA SANDERS, M.D. A fiercely independent and active 76-year-old woman spent the past decade caring for her aged mother, who died at 99. Weeks after her mother’s death, the woman collapsed at home. She was found to have bleeding from a collection of abnormal blood vessels (known as AVMs, or arteriovenous malformations) in her colon. In the months after, the patient’s red-blood-cell count returned to normal, but she never regained her old energy and strength. She told her daughters that she was weaker and more tired than she had ever been in her life. Dr. Susan Wiskowski, a family physician in Hartford, was the woman’s doctor. Until recently, the patient was in good health for her age, with only a few medical problems: high blood pressure, which was controlled with one medication; hypothyroidism, treated with Synthroid; and cataracts, which had been surgically repaired. Now, out of the blue, she was experiencing rapid weight gain, swelling and weakness in her legs, which made it hard to walk. A couple of weeks after the cardiac work-up, the patient’s behavior became erratic and strange. Despite her complaints of weakness, she veered between bursts of activity — endlessly cleaning her house, giving large dinner parties — and days of isolation and fatigue. She was sometimes elated, telling her four daughters that she’d found where heaven was located. She began to talk about giving away her possessions. One afternoon she seemed completely out of control. A neighbor called 911, and the patient was rushed by ambulance to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex
Link ID: 15297 - Posted: 05.07.2011

Estrogen's effects on aging brain explored

By Amina Zafar, CBC News The role estrogen plays in women's brains remains murky but researchers are beginning to clarify it. The first Women's Brain Health Academic Symposium in Toronto on Wednesday brought together experts from North America leading a discussion about trying to better understand the female brain. "Seventy per cent of Alzheimer's patients are women," said Lynn Posluns, founder and chair of the Women of Baycrest, which aims to raise $5 million for a research chair devoted to women's brain health. Researchers want to uncover exactly how estrogen affects different regions of the female brain.Researchers want to uncover exactly how estrogen affects different regions of the female brain. Brian Snyder/Reuters Yet most laboratory studies today are done on male rats because female rats are considered too complex, Posluns said. "I'm saying there's a real disconnect here. It is time for scientists to better understand the female brain." At the symposium, Gillian Einstein, a professor of psychology and public health at the University of Toronto, talked about her early findings exploring the role of estrogen on brain functions such as mood and memory. "I want women to be circumspect about the effect of their hormones on their mood and cognition," said Einstein. "It may or may not be PMS that makes you grumpy. It's possible that your husband really did do something crappy, and you have a reasonable response to it. [On the other hand] I also think it's important to think they may be having an effect." © CBC 2011

Low testosterone linked with financial risk-taking

CONJURE up an image of a financial risk-taker, and you'll probably picture an aggressive Wall Street trader, testosterone surging as he closes the deal. But new research suggests that people with low levels of the male sex hormone are also likely to take financial risks. Previous studies have linked high levels of testosterone to certain risk-seeking behaviours. To investigate whether financial risk-taking follows a similar pattern, Scott Huettel at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, measured the testosterone levels of 298 people, who then took part in trials in which they chose between a fixed known reward or a gamble between getting a payout - mostly larger than the fixed reward - or nothing. Overall, the volunteers generally preferred the known return than the gamble, even if they would have been better off, on average, by taking a chance. Surprisingly, the biggest risks were taken by people with very high or very low testosterone, compared with the average levels for their gender (Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797611401752). Economists want to predict who is likely to be successful at playing financial markets, says Dario Mastripieri at the University of Chicago. "It's legitimate to ask if biology is going to have an effect." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Why women get anxious at that 'time of the month'

by Wendy Zukerman Is it that time of the month? These are the words no man should ever utter. How about this for a diplomatic alternative: "Are your GABA receptors playing up?" You may be spot on. It seems that these brain cells are to blame for some women's monthly mood swings. Many women feel a little irritable before menstruating, but up to 8 per cent suffer extreme symptoms, including anxiety, depression and fatigue. Symptoms of what's called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) begin around a week before menstruation when women are in the "late luteal phase" of their cycle and progesterone levels are at their height. Symptoms quickly subside after menstruation, once the so-called "follicular phase" has kicked in. To investigate potential mechanisms behind PMDD, Andrea Rapkin at the University of California, Los Angeles used a PET scan, which shows where glucose is being metabolised to identify activity in the brain. The idea was to analyse the brain activity of 12 women with PMDD and 12 without the condition, at various times throughout their menstrual cycle. Before each scan, the women rated the severity of any symptoms they had on a scale of one to six. Blood samples were also taken to test their hormone levels. Fluctuating hormones were not to blame: all the women experienced similar jumps in progesterone levels throughout their cycle, irrespective of whether they had PMDD or not. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

'Love' hormone has a dark side

By Bruce Bower SAN ANTONIO — Oxytocin, a hormone with a rosy reputation for getting people to love, trust and generally make nice with one another, can get down and dirty, according to evidence presented on January 28 at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. This brain-altering substance apparently amplifies whatever social proclivities a person already possesses, whether positive or negative, says psychologist Jennifer Bartz of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Previous work has shown that a nasal blast of the hormone encourages a usually trusting person to become more trusting (SN Online: 5/21/08), but now Bartz and her colleagues find that it also makes a highly suspicious person more uncooperative and hostile than ever. “Oxytocin does not simply make everyone feel more secure, trusting and prosocial,” Bartz says. These new results raise concerns about plans by some researchers to administer oxytocin to people with autism and other psychiatric conditions that include social difficulties, she adds. Her team studied 14 people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and 13 volunteers with no psychiatric conditions. Symptoms of borderline personality disorder include severe insecurity about relationships, fears of abandonment and constant, needy reassurance-seeking from partners. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Regimens: Antidepressant May Help Quench Hot Flashes

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR A new study suggests that a widely prescribed antidepressant may provide at least some relief for women with hot flashes. Hormone replacement therapy is now the only treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration for menopausal symptoms, but many believe its risks outweigh its benefits. This study, published Thursday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, was a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial of escitalopram (brand name Lexapro) in which 97 menopausal women took the drug for eight weeks while a matched group took a placebo. Just over half of the women in the treatment group reported a decrease of at least 50 percent in the frequency of hot flashes; 36 percent did in the placebo group. Women taking escitalopram averaged 1.41 fewer hot flashes per day than in those on the placebo, and there were no serious side effects. And almost two-thirds of the treatment group wanted to continue the medication, compared with 42 percent of the others. The lead author, Ellen W. Freeman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania, stressed that this is an off-label use of the drug not approved by the F.D.A. Still, she said, “it provides an option, and there’s not much out there that has been shown to be effective.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Depth of the Kindness Hormone Appears to Know Some Bounds

By NICHOLAS WADE Oxytocin has been described as the hormone of love. This tiny chemical, released from the hypothalamus region of the brain, gives rat mothers the urge to nurse their pups, keeps male prairie voles monogamous and, even more remarkable, makes people trust each other more. Yes, you knew there had to be a catch. As oxytocin comes into sharper focus, its social radius of action turns out to have definite limits. The love and trust it promotes are not toward the world in general, just toward a person’s in-group. Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism. A principal author of the new take on oxytocin is Carsten K. W. De Dreu, a psychologist at the University of Amsterdam. Reading the growing literature on the warm and cuddly effects of oxytocin, he decided on evolutionary principles that no one who placed unbounded trust in others could survive. Thus there must be limits on oxytocin’s ability to induce trust, he assumed, and he set out to define them. In a report published last year in Science, based on experiments in which subjects distributed money, he and colleagues showed that doses of oxytocin made people more likely to favor the in-group at the expense of an out-group. With a new set of experiments in Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he has extended his study to ethnic attitudes, using Muslims and Germans as the out-groups for his subjects, Dutch college students. © 2011 The New York Times Company

The dark side of oxytocin, much more than just a “love hormone”

Ed Yong There’s a chemical that can subtly shift your childhood memories of your own mother. In some people, it paints mum in a more saintly light, making them remember her as closer and more caring. In others, the chemical has a darker influence, casting mum as a less caring and more distant parent. All of this becomes heavily ironic when you consider that the chemical in question – a hormone called oxytocin – is often billed as the “hormone of love”, and even marketed as “Liquid Trust”. As a new study shows, the reality is much more complicated. Describing oxytocin as the “hormone of love” is like describing a computer as a “writing tool” – it does other things too, some of which aren’t pleasant. Oxytocin is a versatile actor, whose resume includes all sorts of jobs in sex, reproduction, social behaviour and emotions. It can increase trust among people and make them more cooperative (this works in meerkats, too). It can increase the social skills of autistic people. It’s released during orgasm. It affects lactating breasts, contracting wombs and the behaviour of sheep mothers towards their newly born lambs. The list goes on: drug addiction, generosity, depression, empathy, learning, memory. Despite these many roles, oxytocin is often reduced to a misleading label. While “hormone of love” may be great for catchy headlines and compelling marketing slogans, they are ultimately misleading. Jennifer Bartz from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has found that oxytocin can have completely opposite effects on the way people behave, depending on how they view their relationships to other people. © 2010, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

HRT 'makes women's brains younger' after menopause

By Helen Briggs Health reporter, BBC News Sex hormones taken by women after the menopause may make their brains "younger", researchers claim. A small study of post-menopausal women found those on HRT performed better in tests measuring how the left and right hand sides of the brain work together. Psychologists at Durham University say it mirrors the brain activity of younger women who naturally produce the sex hormones in their bodies. The research is published in the journal Hormones and Behavior. The study involved 62 post-menopausal women aged between 46 and 71. Of these, 36 were on hormone therapy, while the rest were in the control group. All were right-handed. They were asked to carry out fine motor coordination tasks, such as tapping buttons with different fingers using both their left and right hands. The researchers say both hands performing together equally was a sign that the two brain halves were interacting more. This was found to be more pronounced in the women on HRT. BBC © MMX

Are you like Mr. Spock? Low testosterone may be why

By Amanda Chan If you're a guy who finds it hard to talk about your feelings, the problem might lie with your testosterone levels, a recent study suggests. A psychological condition called alexithymia is found in people who have an extraordinarily difficult time conveying emotions to others and interpreting others' feelings. Past studies have shown that alexithymia and depression are closely related, and the condition has long been associated with aging. Depression, low testosterone and erectile dysfunction are all known to become more common in men as they age. Researchers from Finland wanted to see if alexithymia is a result of aging itself, or if it is actually caused by other factors that typically come with aging, like a lower sex drive. In the study, nearly 1,400 men ages 25 to 65 filled out questionnaires during a three-year period, beginning in 1998, and reported difficulties they had in expressing thoughts and emotions, symptoms of depression and general life-satisfaction levels. Out of those 1,400 men, researchers chose 116, half who had symptoms of alexithymia and half who did not, and asked them to complete a follow-up survey and report their alcohol intake, smoking status, and other information, and were also given a blood test to check their testosterone levels, said study researcher Kirsi Honkalampi, a professor at the Kuopio Psychiatric Center in Finland. MyHealthNewsDaily Copyright © 2010.

Women's Brains on Steroids: Birth control pills appear to remodel brain structure

By Craig H. Kinsley and Elizabeth A. Meyer It seems that weekly we hear about some professional athlete who sullies himself and his sport through abuse of steroids. The melodrama unfolds, careers and statistics are brought low and asterisked, and everyone bemoans another fallen competitor. Yet there are millions of cases of steroid use that occur daily with barely a second thought: Millions of women take birth control pills, blithely unaware that their effects may be subtly seeping into and modulating brain structure and activity. It is a huge experiment whose resolution will not be known for a while, but a new study in the journal Brain Research demonstrates that the effects are likely to be dramatic. It found that birth control pills have structural effects on regions of the brain that govern higher-order cognitive activities, suggesting that a woman on birth control pills may literally not be herself -- or is herself, on steroids. The human brain is a remarkable structure, not least because of its seemingly infinite capacity for change, adapting millisecond by millisecond. Indeed, a structure with tens of billions of neurons, each of which has the ability to elaborate and branch and become more complex, while changing its activity in the process, is the very definition of change. This so-called neuroplasticity is a hallmark of the nervous system. It can, however, be augmented, boosted, by artificial means, and if we are not careful, the brain may go all catawampus. Steroid hormones, which are excreted by endocrine organs such as testes and ovaries, flow in abundance throughout the bloodstream, reach target organs and structures, and exert powerful effects on them. To wit, the cock’s comb, the buck’s antlers, the lion’s mane, the blood-engorged uterus. © 2010 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 14505 - Posted: 09.30.2010

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