TY - JOUR
T1 - Testosterone reactivity is associated with reduced neural response to reward in early adolescence
AU - White, Stuart F.
AU - Lee, Yoojin
AU - Schlund, Michael W.
AU - Shirtcliff, Elizabeth A.
AU - Ladouceur, Cecile D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health ( R01 MH099007 , PI: Ladouceur; K01 MH110643 , PI: White) and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, University of Pittsburgh ( NIH UL1TR001857 ). The authors would also like to thank the adolescents and their families for volunteering to participate in our research study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - The marked increase in adolescent reward-seeking behavior has important implications for adaptive and maladaptive development. Reward-seeking is linked to increased testosterone and increased neural responses to reward cues. How acute testosterone changes modulate neural reward systems remains unclear. Based on previous work, adolescents, particularly males, showing an increase in endogenous testosterone reactivity were hypothesized to show increased neural response to reward in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and posterior cingulate cortex. Sixty-one healthy adolescents aged 10–13 (38 female, mean age = 12.01 [SD = 1.00]) completed a reward-cue processing task during fMRI. Saliva samples to be assayed for testosterone were collected immediately before and after scanning. Acute testosterone changes were not associated with variation in behavioral performance. Within ventromedial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, increased acute testosterone change was associated with reduced discrimination between rewarded and un-rewarded trials. Results suggest that increasing levels of testosterone may result in reduced attention to/salience of task irrelevant information. In contrast to previous studies that found a positive association between testosterone and neural response to reward, the reward information in the current paradigm was irrelevant to success in task performance. These results are consistent with theoretical conceptualization of testosterone's role in reproduction, which involves a shift in salience to short-term relative to long-term goals. These data further emphasized the need to consider context in the study of hormones; specific behaviors will be up- or down-regulated by a hormone based on the fit of the behavior with the broader contextual goal being orchestrated by the hormone.
AB - The marked increase in adolescent reward-seeking behavior has important implications for adaptive and maladaptive development. Reward-seeking is linked to increased testosterone and increased neural responses to reward cues. How acute testosterone changes modulate neural reward systems remains unclear. Based on previous work, adolescents, particularly males, showing an increase in endogenous testosterone reactivity were hypothesized to show increased neural response to reward in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and posterior cingulate cortex. Sixty-one healthy adolescents aged 10–13 (38 female, mean age = 12.01 [SD = 1.00]) completed a reward-cue processing task during fMRI. Saliva samples to be assayed for testosterone were collected immediately before and after scanning. Acute testosterone changes were not associated with variation in behavioral performance. Within ventromedial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, increased acute testosterone change was associated with reduced discrimination between rewarded and un-rewarded trials. Results suggest that increasing levels of testosterone may result in reduced attention to/salience of task irrelevant information. In contrast to previous studies that found a positive association between testosterone and neural response to reward, the reward information in the current paradigm was irrelevant to success in task performance. These results are consistent with theoretical conceptualization of testosterone's role in reproduction, which involves a shift in salience to short-term relative to long-term goals. These data further emphasized the need to consider context in the study of hormones; specific behaviors will be up- or down-regulated by a hormone based on the fit of the behavior with the broader contextual goal being orchestrated by the hormone.
KW - Adolescence
KW - Posterior cingulate cortex
KW - Reward
KW - Testosterone
KW - Ventromedial prefrontal cortex
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U2 - 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112593
DO - 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112593
M3 - Article
C2 - 32194193
AN - SCOPUS:85082679809
VL - 387
JO - Behavioural Brain Research
JF - Behavioural Brain Research
SN - 0166-4328
M1 - 112593
ER -