Abstract
Studies with steroid hormones underlined the vital role of testosterone on social-emotional processing. However, there is still a lack of studies investigating whether testosterone modulates network connectivity during resting-state. Here, we tested how the exogenous application of testosterone would affect functional connectivity between regions implicated in emotion regulation. In total, 96 male participants underwent resting-state fMRI scanning. Before the measurement, half of the subjects received 5 g TestimTM gel (containing 50 mg testosterone) and the other half a corresponding amount of placebo gel. Seeds for the connectivity analysis were meta-analytically defined. First, all regions associated with emotion regulation were chosen via Neurosynth (data driven). Among those, specific seeds were selected and categorized based on the neural model of emotion regulation by Etkin and colleagues (Etkin et al., 2015) (theory-guided). Resting-state connectivity analysis revealed decreased connectivity between the right DLPFC and the right amygdala as well as between the VMPFC and the left IPL for the testosterone group compared to the placebo group. A complementary dynamic causal modeling (DCM) analysis on findings from the resting-state connectivity analysis underlined a bidirectional coupling which was decreased close to zero by testosterone administration. Our results demonstrate that testosterone administration disrupts resting-state connectivity within fronto-subcortical and fronto-parietal circuits. The findings suggest that even without a specific task (e.g. challenge, reward processing) testosterone modulates brain networks important for social-emotional processing.
Highlights
Studies with steroid hormones underlined the vital role of testosterone on social-emotional processing
By investigating resting-state brain connectivity of regions involved in emotion regulation, this study aimed to reveal the effects of testosterone on network connectivity during rest in human males
We did not observe any significant differences between treatment groups for the questionnaires assessed, i.e., the BIS-11, AQ, Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI), and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ)
Summary
Studies with steroid hormones underlined the vital role of testosterone on social-emotional processing. There is still a lack of studies investigating whether testosterone modulates network connectivity during resting-state. The findings suggest that even without a specific task (e.g. challenge, reward processing) testosterone modulates brain networks important for social-emotional processing. The influence of exogenous testosterone on emotion and behavior has been linked to functional alterations of several brain structures. The influence of exogenous testosterone (artificial hormonal manipulation; usually transdermal or oral administration) on emotion and behavior has been linked to functional alterations of several brain structures. A further study applying a face-matching task found that testosterone administration reduced the connectivity between the inferior frontal gyrus and the supplementary motor area in female participants[7]. While findings on the effect of a single dose of testosterone on resting-state connectivity are currently lacking, there is some indication of a potential effect provided by the investigation of male anabolic steroid users. Another study found that when facing an acute threat, a single testosterone administration decoupled the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex from a subcortical system including the central-medial amygdala, hypothalamus, and periaqueductal gray[23]
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