Abstract
It is well known that estrogens influence cognitive activities, such as memory, and emotional states. The objective of the present study was to investigate the role of estrogens in the short-term memory processing of basic emotional face expressions, by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) and a recognition memory (RM) behavioral task. Healthy young women were divided into a periovulatory (PO) group, characterized by high levels of estrogens and low levels of progesterone, and an early follicular (EF) group, characterized by low levels of both estrogens and progesterone. During the RM task, all subjects viewed images of faces expressing six basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, fear) and one neutral expression while their electrophysiological activity was recorded. We considered P300 components, amplitude, and latency in response to each stimulus. Soon after the presentation of each stimulus face, a target image was presented, consisting of two faces, one of which was the same, while the other was a chimerical face, obtained by mixing the upper or lower halves of the faces of the stimulus image with a different emotion. The subjects had to choose between the two alternatives, and the reaction time (RT) and accuracy of response (RM errors) were measured. The main findings of this study showed that P300 amplitudes are significantly higher in response to the expressions of happiness, but significantly lower for sadness, in PO compared to EF. The P300 data are consistent with performance in the RM task and with the measures of RT. The interest in the emotion of happiness, unlike sadness, during the PO phase may reflect the evolutionary significance of female sex hormones linked to mating behavior.
Highlights
The influence of estrogens, the principal female sex hormones, on learning and memory is of particular interest due to increasing average life expectancies
During the PO phase, progesterone levels remained low (90.75 ± 8.59 pg/ml), while estrogen levels rose at a value of 7.18 pg/ml (SEM = 0.85)
A statistical comparison between the hormonal levels characterizing the two groups showed a significant difference related to estrogens (t(64) = −5.427; p < 0.001), while there was no significant difference in progesterone levels (t(64) = −1.546; p = 0.127, n.s.; Figure 3)
Summary
The influence of estrogens, the principal female sex hormones, on learning and memory is of particular interest due to increasing average life expectancies. The effect of estrogens on the brain is well known, with the widespread presence of receptors (ERs), ERα, ERβ, and G-protein coupled ER in regions crucial for learning, memory, and emotion, Estrogen Role on Memory Processes including the cerebral cortex, the hippocampal formation (HF), and amygdala (Osterlund et al, 2000a,b; Gasbarri et al, 2012; Lymer et al, 2018). One of the most important social skills is the ability to interpret the moods and feelings of other people, and facial emotional expressions provide numerous different socially important signals, and so likely represent the most important visual stimuli in the human environment, both from a biological and a social point of view (Ekman, 1999; Adolphs, 2003; Keltner et al, 2003; Adams et al, 2017)
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